FALLACY 
 
 ANDREW MACPHAIL 

 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ^p t\)t 
 
 ^amc 9[tit!)or 
 
 ESSAYS IN 
 
 PURITANISM, 
 
 1905 
 
 THE VINE 
 
 DF SIBMAH, 
 
 1906 
 
 ESSAYS IN 
 
 POLITICS, 
 
 1909 
 
 ESSAYS IN 
 
 FALLACY, 
 
 1910
 
 ESSAYS IN FALLACY
 
 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDREW MACPHAIL 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 
 
 LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 
 1910
 
 COPYRIGHT, I9IO, BY ANDREW MACPHAIL
 
 
 NOTE 
 
 The Essays which are contained in this book are 
 addressed immediately to the woman, the pro- 
 fessor, and the theologian, — three persons who 
 have much in common, the one with the other. The 
 Essay with which the book begins has arisen out 
 of a series of articles contributed to " The Specta- 
 tor." Upon that occasion the conclusions set forth 
 were accepted in certain quarters as being only 
 partially true, especially by persons who had not 
 read them. Also, the limit of space imposed by 
 periodical publication compels a condensed form 
 of statement, and does not permit of that expanse 
 of writing and wealth of illustration by which a 
 free asperity of expression may be obtained, and 
 full conviction enforced. The exposition of the 
 psychology of the suffragette in the second paper 
 is, I think, sufficiently obvious, and does not require 
 further comment. The fallacy in theology was 
 expounded in the presence of an Inter-denomi- 
 national Conference of Ministers with so cheer- 
 ful acceptance that I am induced to present the 
 interpretation of this recondite and perplexing
 
 vi NOTE 
 
 matter in a more elaborate form. In the Essay on 
 Education I am on safer ground, although long 
 contemplation has deprived me of that freshness 
 of perception with which I approached the pre- 
 vious themes. With fine subtlety of instinct, he 
 who instils intellectual doubts has always been 
 branded as "the enemy " ; and yet, in defence, I 
 beg leave to put forward to the persons for whom 
 this book is intended the plaintive enquiry which 
 the Apostle addressed to the Galatians: "-4m / 
 become an enemy because I speak the truth f^^ 
 
 A. M.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. The American Woman .... 1 
 II. The Psychology of the Suffragette . . 55 
 
 III. The Fallacy In Education . . . .101 
 
 IV. The Fallacy in Theology . . .191
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 
 
 The old-fashioned American novelist who was 
 pressed for an explanation of the waywardness of 
 his heroine always found it in the fact that she 
 was born of a French mother. The English writer 
 of early romance invariably attributed the vagaries 
 of his heroines to the circumstance that they grew 
 up without mothers at all. 
 
 The second of these observations was originally 
 made, I believe, by Francis Jeffrey in the " Edin- 
 burgh Review," and has been confirmed more 
 recently by Mr. AUport and Mr. Mount in the 
 " Spectator." So shall we explain the unsophis- 
 ticated Miranda, the ingenuous Desdemona, the 
 vivacious Rosalind, and the wayward Jessica. The 
 ostentatious prudery of Pamela, the sprightly 
 courage of Sophia Western, the dourness of Jane 
 Eyre, the wrongheadedness of Dorothea Brooke, 
 the obvious virtues of Flora Maclvor, Rebecca, 
 Rowena, Julia Mannering, Di Vernon, Jeanie 
 Deans, Amy Robsart, Alice Lee, Catherine 
 Glover, — indeed, of all Scott's heroines with the 
 single exception of Lucy Ashton, and all Shake- 
 speare's witli the exception of Juliet, — are trace-
 
 4 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 able to the circumstance that they were mother- 
 less. 
 
 The foreign novelist of to-day finds quite an- 
 other explanation, not of the virtues, — for nov- 
 elists no longer find virtuous heroines interesting, 
 — but of the caprice of his heroine in the fact 
 that she is, or is descended from, an " American 
 Woman," as he understands the term. And so, 
 in roundabout fashion, we have got to our subject 
 at last. All novels are written for women except 
 the few which are worth writing. Time was 
 when their characters achieved distinction by 
 reason of the temptations which they resisted 
 rather than by the concessions which they made. 
 The English heroine resists or yields to her desire 
 for place ; her French sister is impelled by love ; 
 it is luxurious idleness alone which appeals to the 
 " American Woman " of foreign fiction. In liter- 
 ature and life this is the clue to her actions. 
 
 This prodigy, which looms so portentous, will 
 bear some investigation. The term itself, whilst 
 it has a certain definitive value, is also capable 
 of wide extension in time and place. The mani- 
 festation is not confined to the American continent, 
 nor even to the United States. Indeed it is en- 
 tirely inaccurate as a description of the mothers, 
 wives, and daughters of the average American
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 5 
 
 man ; and it will be of incalculable benefit to the 
 bewildered foreigner, as well as to American 
 women, if we can succeed in establishing the dis- 
 tinction. To expose that fallacy is the severe task 
 to which I have set my hand. It is a difficult sub- 
 ject to handle discreetly, and will demand a nice 
 manipulation of words, to avoid the charge that 
 one is a profane railer at the sanctities, or has de- 
 scended to the vulgar exercise of public calumny. 
 This anomaly in classification is not confined 
 to any one department of natural history, as may 
 be readily illustrated. We describe that anatoid, 
 web-footed bird which is larger than a duck and 
 smaller than a swan as the Canada Goose, whilst 
 in reality the animal is the Bvanta canadensis. 
 It is not a goose, and is not especially indigenous 
 to Canada. To speak of the " American Woman " 
 as if she were confined to, or even especially char- 
 acteristic of, the United States, is as if one were 
 to assume that the common scale which destroys 
 apple trees is found nowhere else than in San 
 Jos^, or that the potato-bug confines its ravages to 
 Colorado- These pests did not even originate in 
 the places whose names they bear, and the " Amer- 
 ican Woman " of the novelists was a common 
 occurrence long before the United States were 
 discovered.
 
 6 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 It is a familiar fact, however, that a disease 
 which occurs sporadically in one milieu will burst 
 into an epidemic of unexampled fury when it is 
 transferred to a new environment. The malady 
 known as measles, which is comparatively harm- 
 less in all civilized communities, becomes a plague 
 worse than small-pox when primitive peoples 
 are inoculated with its virus. Upon this analogy 
 it would appear probable that the " American 
 Woman " was introduced into the United States 
 at a very early period, and finding there a suit- 
 able environment, began to develop an exuberant 
 growth and to thrive exceedingly, with such coarse 
 luxuriousness as one beholds in a shade-dwelling 
 plant which is suddenly transported into the light. 
 
 An experience of a similar nature has been 
 witnessed in England in the case of rats. The 
 " Old-English " black rat, up to the eighteenth 
 centui'y, was in possession of the country. But 
 about that time, and curiously coincident with 
 certain political events, England was invaded by 
 the "Hanoverian" brown rat, which was probably 
 Mongolian in origin. The invaders — according to 
 this natural law — began to breed with amazing 
 rapidity, and are at present in entire control of 
 the situation. And yet the analogy is scarcely 
 convincing, since rats increase and multipl}^ by
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 7 
 
 the process of ordinary generation, whilst the type 
 under consideration breeds only very sparingly. 
 By a process of calculated sterility which event- 
 ually becomes automatic, she attains to the illu- 
 sory reward of childlessness. 
 
 It would be too large a task to trace the genesis 
 of the " American Woman" beyond the period 
 of her entry into New England, fascinating as 
 that investisration would be. The evidence of her 
 existence in remote times and in diverse places 
 is ample. In Ephesus we seem to suspect her pre- 
 sence. Indeed the words of Paul are confirmatory : 
 " I suffer not a woman to usurp authority over a 
 man, but to be in silence." Upon this matter of 
 women the Apostle had made up his mind. Mod- 
 est apparel, and sobriety, and good works, he told 
 the women of the mongrel city of Corinth, were 
 more becoming to them than costly array. We 
 could well wish that, upon other matters of doc- 
 trine, he had been equally specific. In the remote 
 days of the much distressed Ezekiel there were 
 also women of this type, who, by the absurd prac- 
 tice of " sewing pillows to their armholes, made 
 the hearts of the righteous sad." The Proverbi- 
 alist also, in his great eulogy, had this woman in 
 his mind when he declared that " favour is deceit- 
 ful and beauty vain."
 
 8 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 We suspect her presence in Rome as early as 
 the close of the Punic War, if Livius informs us 
 truly of an incident which finds its exact coun- 
 terpart in the conduct of the women who have 
 recently been behaving with unseemliness in the 
 House of Commons. The reasons are well given 
 by Cato, the Consul, in his speech : " If men had 
 retained their rights and dignity within the family, 
 the women would never have broken out in this 
 public manner. But now we allow them to take 
 part in politics. If they succeed, who knows where 
 they will end? " To this L. Valerius, the Tribune, 
 made the familiar reply : " Women cannot hold 
 public offices or gain triumphs ; they have no pub- 
 lic occupations. What, then, can they do but de- 
 vote their time to adornment and dress ? Surely, 
 then, men ought to let them have their own way 
 in these matters." 
 
 The " American Woman " was early upon the 
 scene in New England, probably as early as 1620, 
 the year in which the first ship-load of passengers 
 arrived. The annals of the community are full of 
 accounts of her doings. One of the most froward 
 brought the accusation against the ministers in 
 Boston that they were, with one exception, under 
 a covenant of works ; and she made out so good 
 a case that she was banished. A companion of
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 9 
 
 hers harassed the ministers for five years by aris- 
 ing in church and asking questions, apparently 
 to elucidate the sermon, but in reality to afford 
 her the opportunity of applying opprobrious epi- 
 thets to the preachers. At length she was forcibly 
 removed from the communion-table and "put 
 forth by the constable." A third woman pushed 
 her recalcitrancy to such a point that " she would 
 not bow her knee even at the name of Jesus." 
 The whip and cleft stick was her portion ; yet in 
 spite of these precautionary measures, the evil had 
 grown so large that in ten years sixty women as- 
 sembled regularly to " revolve points of doctrine." 
 A diet of ministers was established to consider fur- 
 ther measures of repression, but it is perhaps need- 
 less to add that nothing very definite came of their 
 deliberations. The general opinion prevailed that 
 the phenomenon was a new one in the history of 
 the world ; but, in opposition to this, John Cot- 
 ton cited the case of Eve, of Sara, of Jezebel, of 
 Herodias, and the Scarlet Woman. He contended 
 boldly that the type which was causing them so 
 much annoyance had not arisen de novo, but had 
 come from the devil. 
 
 The origin of evil has always been a fascinat- 
 ing speculation to the novelist as well as to the 
 theologian ; but all writers are agreed that it
 
 10 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 lies somewhere outside of their own hearts and 
 beyond the confines of their own country. When 
 Canadians discover political and social evils in 
 their midst, they are quite sure that they come 
 from the United States. The outbreaks of wick- 
 edness, which occurred sporadically, though not 
 infrequently, in Scotland, ranging in heinousness 
 from assassination to sleeping in church, were 
 ultimately traced across the Tweed to England, 
 or across the Channel to France. The early inhab- 
 itants of New England — Puritan though they 
 were — found that the " American Woman " was 
 also present with them ; and, having no neigh- 
 bours from whom they could acquire the infection, 
 they boldly ascribed the phenomenon to an out- 
 side source and laid it to the charge of the devil. 
 
 One has a certain hesitancy in contradicting 
 the divines of New England upon a question in 
 which they were so much at home ; yet I think 
 that, by a less esoteric exegesis, we may arrive at 
 an understanding of this phenomenon. Idleness 
 alone, which they described as the " mother of 
 naughtiness," will account for all those charac- 
 teristics which are expressed by the term " Ameri- 
 can Woman." It is an eternal law — at least it 
 has been a law since the beginning of created 
 things — that an organ, an animal, or a species
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 11 
 
 cannot exist independently of its function. Life 
 and growth are bound up with work, and we have 
 not yet grown so mighty that we have emanci- 
 pated ourselves from the dominion of this law. 
 
 The primitive functions of the woman were to 
 prepare food and clothing, to care for her mate 
 and the offspring which she had assisted in pro- 
 ducing. In course of time, and for reasons largely 
 beyond her control, these activities have become 
 less incumbent upon her. With one exception 
 they have been usurped by the male or placed in 
 the hands of hirelings. In the progress of civili- 
 zation and by the division of labour the food is 
 purchased partially or wholly prepared. The 
 cereal food and the soup require only the ad- 
 dition of boiling water, as the advertisements 
 boast ; the fish and meat may be eaten without 
 the necessity of her performing that humble la- 
 bour. In America this industrial change has been 
 remarkably rapid, and there are women living in 
 idleness to-day, who in their youth took the sheaf 
 from the field and had the evening meal prepared 
 from it before the night fell. 
 
 Every advance in that industrial development 
 of which we are boasting continually makes for 
 the destruction of the family. Originally each 
 family was more or less self-contained and mutu-
 
 12 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 ally supporting. The man procured food from 
 the forest, from the sea, or from the soil, and he 
 was aided in these occupations by his boys, who 
 became competent at a very early age. The woman 
 dressed the skins, made them into garments, and 
 prepared the food for eating. In later times she 
 carded the wool, spun the yarn, wove the cloth, 
 and fashioned it into clothing ; and there are men 
 yet living who look back with yearning to a fam- 
 ily life in which these occupations were the chief 
 concern. At an early age the girl too was initi- 
 ated into these mysteries. She was self-support- 
 ing from her childhood ; and, indeed, added to 
 the wealth and comfort of the family. The child, 
 instead of being a burden, was an asset. Both 
 male and female were efficient members of the 
 community, and there was an honoured place for 
 even the maiden aunt, made honourable by her 
 usefulness. This was a sound, sober, and healthy 
 life, dignified by honest toil and the pride of skill 
 and independence. 
 
 Into this community of families comes the 
 manufacturer with his machinery, and his love of 
 money, and his formulas about efficiency, saving 
 of labour, industrial progress, and commercial 
 development. Every turn of his wheels disinte- 
 grates the family by destroying the multifarious
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 13 
 
 occupation of every member of it. The butter 
 which used to be churned in the dairy kept cool by 
 an over-hanging willow-tree is now made in a fac- 
 tory. The sheep which the children tended upon 
 the hillside are gone, and with them the occupa- 
 tions of carding, spinning, and weaving, which 
 made the long winter evenings too short for the 
 work to be done. The larder is stored day by day 
 from the grocer's waggon, and those delectable 
 times are vanished in which the womenkind, with 
 a book ready at hand for an emergency of idle- 
 ness, gathered the apple and the berry, and pre- 
 served them in shining rows, not for that year 
 alone but for next year and the year after. 
 
 The care of the offspring has been handed over 
 to male and female hirelings, — physicians and 
 nurses, — and thus a wide outlet for the physical 
 and mental activity of the woman has been effec- 
 tually stopped. Deprived of the care of her chil- 
 dren, the woman suffers a diminution of her affec- 
 tion, and it is replaced by a noisy sentimentalism 
 which is equally disastrous for mother, child, and 
 husband. It is the maternal instinct running riot. 
 It exhausts itself upon the infant, and none re- 
 mains for the growing child when it might be of 
 some value. The American mother is famous for 
 the care of her infant and the neglect of her child ;
 
 14 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 and yet we cannot but wonder that the results 
 should be so good as they are, when we reflect 
 how many mothers are ignorant, how many are 
 indolent, and how many there are whose work and 
 leisure are misapplied. 
 
 We have seen that women have handed over 
 their function of preparing food to the cook, the 
 making of clothing to the tailor, the care of their 
 children to the physician. If these substitutes 
 were females, the case would not be so anomalous; 
 but, on the contrary, they are males, and I believe 
 that all women now recognize the superiority of 
 the man-cook, the man-tailor, and the man-mid- 
 wife. It was left to Ibsen to discover that a woman 
 could not sew a button to a garment effectually, 
 and he was in the habit of performing that hum- 
 ble office for himself. Since his death, however, his 
 wife has confessed that she made it a secret prac- 
 tice to reinforce his attempt with her own needle. 
 
 The country has grown rich, but the family is 
 destroyed. I am quite well aware how far the 
 present condition is due to the mistaken activities 
 of men, but I am not speaking of them just now. 
 When the family life was swallowed up in the 
 industrial life the natural occupations of women 
 vanished. There was then idleness and money for 
 the women of the rich ; idleness alone for the
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 15 
 
 women of the poor. To escape from the continu- 
 ous torture of sheer want, these were obliged to 
 take refuge in the street, and the factory, which 
 is twin-sister to the slum. But for the daughters 
 of the newly rich there was not even this poor ref- 
 uge from le vide effrayant de la vie. Both classes 
 are now more unhappy than when they lived 
 in trees. The women of the poor are imploring 
 the world for leisure, and the women of the rich 
 are imploring it for work as a relief from pam- 
 pered self-indulgence. They are not allowed to 
 earn money, since that would be taking the bread 
 from their poorer sisters. In default of answer 
 they are creating work for themselves, and are 
 even willing to perform the drudgery of chari- 
 table societies, for the sake of tiring themselves 
 out. This feverish desire to do something is a sign 
 of the malady of the age ; and it is a piteous spec- 
 tacle, — the one class overburdened with uncon- 
 genial toil, the other oppressed with idleness, and 
 wandering into all kinds of vagary through sheer 
 weariness, or resolution to escape from the help- 
 less entanglement of the sordid perplexities and 
 mean trivialities of domestic life. And yet these 
 idle busybodies, worn out with their silly labours, 
 are willing to tread the same weary round the 
 next day.
 
 16 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 The Catholic Church for sixteen centuries has 
 made provision against idleness on the part of its 
 women, in institutions where they have two sover- 
 eign remedies, work and religion. Some feeble 
 beginnings have been made in other churches, 
 which have established sisterhoods, and revived 
 the diaconate for women. But the hospital appears 
 to open the most generous door, though one hears 
 that it is not so well liked as a refuge for idle 
 women as it used to be before it was sought by- 
 women who believed that nursing was a less hum- 
 ble employment than those in which they had 
 been previously engaged. 
 
 Forty years ago it was the fashion to pretend 
 that the world could do very well without religion, 
 if only it had enough science. The scientists are 
 not now so sure of their ground, but they comfort 
 themselves with the further delusion that when 
 we get flying-machines we shall be right. However 
 it may be with men, women cannot get on with- 
 out religion. I am not speaking, either, of that in- 
 ward, ardent desire after righteousness, though 
 that in itself is not to be despised, but of an organ- 
 ized system which gops by the name of Church. 
 It makes for the organization of the family also 
 and for domestic piety, that piety which even in 
 these days impels many an American father to
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 17 
 
 worship God in his household whilst the rain is 
 threatening his crops in the fields. All human 
 conduct has its roots in the emotions, and is vari- 
 ously moulded by the reason — by women less 
 than by men. These roots are twisted and inter- 
 woven ; and when one is stunted, especially so 
 important an one as that which goes down into 
 the springs of religion, the growth is bound to be 
 eccentric and without symmetry. 
 
 In a society which has grown up by natural pro- 
 cess in the course of slow centuries, the woman 
 performs her duties easily, almost unconsciously. 
 In a society which is the product of only a genera- 
 tion, the woman who aspires beyond her primi- 
 tive functions is an amateur in a new role. We 
 have all seen and pitied an animal compelled to 
 perform a new and uncongenial task — a dog in a 
 dance, or a monkey sedulous over his sewing. Off 
 the stage, we are told that these animals are sub- 
 ject to fits of ill-temper, to outbursts of emotion, 
 to discontent ; that they crave for excitement, and 
 that they finally "break down." It is not disclos- 
 ing any professional confidences to say that symp- 
 toms of a somewhat similar nature have been ob- 
 served in the case of the type of woman which we 
 are considering, as a result of her performance. 
 The man and the woman are complementary,
 
 18 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 the one to the other. In so far as the woman ac- 
 quires the qualities and characteristics of the man 
 she becomes to that extent futile, as futile as the 
 man who has acquired the quality of effeminacy. 
 No matter how effeminate a man becomes, he can 
 never be so adorable as a woman. He will always 
 be an amateur in that role, and the woman has 
 him beaten at the start. The man, qua man, in 
 virtue of his own and his ancestral experience 
 has an advantage over the woman in such exer- 
 cises as playing golf, smoking cigarettes, and 
 drinking whiskey, which she will find it difficult 
 to overcome even by the most assiduous effort at 
 imitation. She, also, in our lifetime at least, must 
 remain an amateur ; and her self-consciousness 
 destroys all pleasure to herself or the beholder in 
 her heroic endeavour to be something other than 
 that for which she was designed. 
 
 Keduced by a power not her own to a condition 
 of idleness, her case is a most unhappy one, and 
 her manifold activities in the street, in places of 
 entertainment, and finally in the divorce court 
 are merely blind strivings to free herself from an 
 intolerable ennui. Her life is one of rivalry for 
 appearance and position. The struggle exhausts 
 her energy and all other means at her disposal. 
 Her mind becomes warped and her ambition dis-
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 19 
 
 torted. Eternal restlessness is her portion, a dis- 
 like of any discipline, a hatred of any law save 
 that which her own whim, will, or desire imposes. 
 To impose this law upon others becomes her con- 
 stant occupation. 
 
 The most oppressive burden which a woman is 
 called upon to endure is that anomaly amongst 
 created beings, the wearing of clothes. In the state 
 of nature it is ordained that the female shall go 
 quietly. The male is the gaudy, strutting creature. 
 But in the race to which we belong, it is the 
 ■woman who is glorious, and this burden of splen- 
 dour falling upon an organism which is unquali- 
 fied for the task breaks it down hopelessly, and 
 renders it unfit for the performance of its proper 
 functions. The possession of splendid apparel in- 
 volves the necessity for its display, and out of that 
 arises vanity, jealousy, rivalry, and all unchari- 
 tableness. This is the genesis of the thing which 
 is known as Society. 
 
 To the American man there is something mys- 
 terious about this society, and his womenkind 
 alone are supposed to understand it. He is in re- 
 ality a simple-minded person ; and a certain class 
 of women have entered into a conspiracy against 
 him, by which they shall live in idleness, and he 
 shall " labour and toil, and rob, and steal, and
 
 20 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 bring all to his love." The mark of social distinc- 
 tion in primitive communities is idleness on the 
 part of the woman. One mark of poverty is that 
 women are obliged to work. Brought up in an old- 
 fashioned way, the American man thinks that he 
 has extricated himself from poverty when he has 
 succeeded in keeping his womenkind free from 
 the necessity of work. Speaking generally, this is 
 the aim of the women of this type, — to live a life 
 of luxurious idleness. 
 
 The next anomaly under which we labour is 
 that we are compelled to live in houses and have 
 not yet become convinced what the proper form 
 of habitation is. The American man is himself 
 without taste. The possession of taste is the pre- 
 rogative of the woman. Accordingly she is the 
 one who deals with the architect and decorator, 
 and is supposed to understand all matters per- 
 taining to architecture, decoration, and furnishing 
 in virtue of her femininity alone. When it comes 
 to a question of building a " home " — as if a 
 home could be built with hands — the rich, free, 
 woman, to demonstrate her equality with the rich 
 woman of older communities, must have a house 
 which resembles " the stately homes of England," 
 or a villa which vies in beauty with the abode of 
 a " merchant-prince " of mediaeval Florence : or
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 21 
 
 to demonstrate the catholicity which exists in a 
 free country, she will probably achieve a combi- 
 nation of both, with certain features added, which 
 belong exclusively to a cathedral or a fortress. 
 
 This architectural orgy is enlivened by a piano, 
 we shall say. The more impecunious woman cannot 
 afford even that poor luxury ; but she must have 
 a contrivance which looks like a piano, whilst in 
 reality it is a bed. It serves the purpose of a piano 
 very well, and helps to preserve the semblance 
 of equality ; although the duality of its function 
 interferes with its efficiency as a sleeping-place. 
 
 Again, the rich woman carries in her hand a bag, 
 or satchel, — to give to that convenient article a 
 more elegant designation, — made from the skin of 
 an alligator. This is a mark of distinction which 
 is intolerable in an atmosphere of freedom. Ac- 
 cordingly, the machines are set to work to imitate 
 this handy contrivance, and the spectacle is pro- 
 duced of a whole nation carrying bags which are 
 made out of paper and are not even frankly false. 
 
 In the more degrading social conditions which 
 prevail in older communities each citizen wears 
 clothing which he has learned by experience and 
 tradition is most suitable to his occupation in life ; 
 and this practice leads to a distinction between 
 workers in various trades, to the creation of classes.
 
 22 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 The flare and pearlies of the costermonger, the 
 hobnailed boots of the ploughboy, the blue smock 
 of the butcher, the corduroy trousers of the la- 
 bourer, the garb of the city clerk, all proclaim the 
 class as clearly as a uniform betrays the colonel 
 or the clergyman. In a free country a style is es- 
 tablished, no one can say exactly how. In a month 
 the wife of every member of the community, 
 plumber, barber, factory-hand, and millionaire, is 
 clad in imitation and rivalry of every other. 
 
 There yet remains one function which is in the 
 exclusive possession of the woman, and no means 
 have been discovered up to the present time by 
 which it can be performed any better, though even 
 that is done in a poor, " make-shift way." This is 
 the part which she plays in the propagation of the 
 species. Deprived of this excuse for existence, the 
 female of the human race becomes entirely a para- 
 site unless she finds other justification. And yet in 
 respect of this remaining function there is some 
 evidence that the woman is not doing her best, that 
 in fact she is following the example of that un- 
 profitable servant who wrapped up his one talent 
 in a napkin. 
 
 It is quite possible that this indisposition to 
 exercise a natural function is due not to recalci- 
 trancy, but to an instinct that the species is not
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 23 
 
 worth reproducing. By a purely mental process a 
 woman might arrive at this conclusion, and there 
 is some ground for that view of the case, but she 
 should remain true to the austerity of this doc- 
 trine, and not vitiate the intellectual independence 
 of which she boasts by involving herself in social 
 conditions. The time for proclaiming one's free- 
 dom is before, not after, one has consented to eat 
 the bread of another. But the plea which is put 
 forward is the less cynical one that the quality of 
 offspring is more important than quantity. This, 
 I believe, is a favourite subject of discussion at 
 those assemblages of women which, with some de- 
 gree of incongruity, are styled mothers' meetings. 
 At one of these meetings which I had the privi- 
 lege of addressing, enquiry showed that the tech- 
 nical motherhood estimated in terms of offspring 
 amounted to .87 per person present. An exami- 
 nation of this defence of quality against quantity 
 involves the assumption that it is worth while to 
 consider the opinion of persons who know nothing 
 of the matter in hand, and the further assump- 
 tion that motherhood is conferred by the mere 
 act of attendance at these meetings. The plea is 
 fallacious, for it is a law of life discovered by 
 experience that individual degeneration of the 
 offspring accompanies numerical diminution.
 
 24 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 The fall of the race always comes through the 
 woman. Tempted by the " subtle beast " towards 
 a false ambition and away from her appointed 
 task, she puts forth her hand to attain to a know- 
 ledge which is forbidden, and brings the disaster 
 of obliteration. That is the curse of Eve. But one 
 who would not object much to the sudden extinc- 
 tion of the race might well deplore a long grada- 
 tion of decay. 
 
 There is a profound scientific refutation of this 
 fallacy that quality may be obtained at the ex- 
 pense of quantity. Professor Karl Pearson has 
 shown from his investigations into the inherit- 
 ance of tuberculosis that the earlier members of 
 a large family are more apt to inherit disease 
 than those who are born later, and that therefore 
 the limitation of families to two children, which 
 now appears to be the desirable number, is in- 
 creasing the percentage of persons with weak con- 
 stitutions. This is nature's method of dealing with 
 the fictitious law of primogeniture. Human inge- 
 nuity is powerless in face of the mysterious laws 
 by which reproduction is governed ; and created 
 beings invariably get the worst of it when they 
 set themselves in opposition to those laws. 
 
 Bat, fortunately or unfortunately, a diminish- 
 ing birth-rate is confined for the most part to
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 25 
 
 those societies which we are accustomed to think 
 of as highly civilized. The phenomenon is not 
 new. The Greeks foresaw and feared it. To them 
 the Amazon was the woman broken away from 
 her natural obligations, always a peril to the race. 
 Amongst the Romans, Juvenal made his grim 
 jests at her expense. A false education, he affirmed 
 in his " Legend of Bad Women," which stimu- 
 lated false energies and excited abnormal ambi- 
 tions, made her contemptuous of her femininity, 
 and encouraged her to substitute for it an ideal 
 which was hybrid and grotesque. It was against 
 this type the jest of the comic stage was directed : 
 " A man with her has only two happy days, the 
 day he marries her and the day he buries her." 
 
 It was a favourite view of Sir Thomas Browne 
 that the stork chose to inhabit only those coun- 
 tries which were free. Strangely enough, in these 
 days, it is to the countries which are free — if free- 
 dom be indicated by a republican form of gov- 
 ernment — that this bird of good omen comes the 
 least frequently. We may leave France out of 
 consideration, for that unhappy country has been 
 faithfully dealt with by other moralists, and look 
 a little nearer home. 
 
 Previous to the year 1840, in the United States, 
 the increase in population by native reproduction
 
 26 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 was seven times greater than the growth of immi- 
 gration. Both Washington and Jefferson had esti- 
 mated that in the year 1875 their country would 
 contain sixty millions of native-born Americans. 
 As a matter of fact, according to the census of 
 1900, the numbers were not more than forty-two 
 millions, the rest of the population being made up 
 of immigrants, the children of immigrants, and 
 negroes. Massachusetts, at the time of the census, 
 had in its population of 2,805,346 as many as 
 843,324 persons of foreign birth. The Massa- 
 chusetts Bureau of Labour Statistics has compiled 
 a more recent report on the nationalities of the 
 people engaged in the industries of the State. It 
 deals with industries and professions employing 
 1,079,000 persons, and of these only 62.46 per 
 cent were born in Massachusetts ; in New York, 
 76.6 per cent of the citizens are aliens or the chil- 
 dren of aliens. The first federal census was taken 
 in 1790, the last in 1900. During that period the 
 American family has dwindled from an average 
 of 5.8 to 4.6 persons ; and the number of children 
 under 16 years of age in each family has dimin- 
 ished from 2.8 to 1.5. There are only two other 
 countries in the world, Austria and Germany, in 
 which the ratio is lower. If the normal rate which 
 prevailed in colonial days had been continued,
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 27 
 
 there would be now in the United States twenty 
 million more native-born white citizens than there 
 are. 
 
 In England a remarkable decline in the birth- 
 rate is recorded in the Kegistrar-General's return 
 for the last quarter of 1907. The births regis- 
 tered in England and Wales during the fourth 
 quarter of that year were in the proportion of 
 24.8 annually per 1,000 of the population. This 
 is 2.5 per 1,000 below the mean birth-rate re- 
 corded in the ten preceding fourth quarters, and 
 is the lowest rate recorded in any fourth quarter 
 since civil registration was established. For the 
 whole of 1907 the birth-rate in England and 
 Wales was 26.3 per 1,000, the lowest on record, 
 and 2.1 below the average birth-rate for the pre- 
 ceding ten years. 
 
 We have been accustomed to look to the family 
 life of Germany as the last refuge of sentiment 
 and religion, and yet that country does not appear 
 to be an exception to the law that an advancing 
 civilization and a dwindling birth-rate go hand 
 in hand. We are informed by Professor Werner 
 Sombart, a sufficient authority, that the increase 
 in the population of Germany from forty millions 
 in 1870 to sixty-one millions in 1907 is due not 
 to an increasing birth-rate, but to diminishing
 
 28 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 death-rate. In 1872 the deaths were 30.6 per 
 thousand of population, whilst in 1907 the num- 
 ber had fallen to 20 per thousand. During the 
 same period the birth-rate had fallen from 40.7 
 births for every thousand of population to 37.4 
 in 1891 and to 34 in 1905. Even this is above the 
 average : in Holland the birth-rate is 31.6 ; in 
 Denmark, 29 ; in Belgium, 28.1 ; and in France it 
 is 21.3 per thousand. 
 
 An instinct fails when it ceases to be exercised. 
 When women, in the progress of civilization, 
 abandoned the practice of living in trees for the 
 comfort of a cave, it may be well imagined that 
 they quickly forgot the nice art of tree-keeping. 
 Similarly, those who live in " flats " no longer re- 
 tain a remembrance of the days when they dwelt 
 in houses, and the house as a habitation has be- 
 come as extinct for them as the cave. The instinct 
 for propagating the species is no exception to this 
 law, and in time the female of the human will 
 become sexless in all but form, which is now so 
 firmly fixed that we may not expect any funda- 
 mental alteration. And yet a variation of type is 
 appearing. The "American Woman" of whom 
 I am speaking is growing large, sleek, and fat. 
 She retains her girlhood until comparatively 
 late in life, and then suddenly, to her grief and
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 29 
 
 rage, falls into a condition of senility which 
 no devices serve long to postpone. Indeed the 
 expression " married girls " is commonly employed 
 in those periodicals which concern themselves 
 with her doings. And the proof that this instinct 
 is failing is found in the remedy which is offered, 
 that the nature of it be taught in schools from 
 books on physiology. 
 
 Self-reliance is the most deadly gift which the 
 female of this race can possess ; and yet girls are 
 taught from their earliest years to be assertive of 
 their opinions, insistent upon their rights, and 
 clamorous for a consideration which can be given 
 ungrudgingly only when it is least demanded. 
 And so she goes through life with squared shoul- 
 ders and set face, alert for any " insult to her 
 womanhood." The American man, loving peace, 
 desiring to be left to his employments and de- 
 vices, pretends to acquiesce, and so leaves her in 
 the enjoyment of the fool's paradise which she 
 has created for herself. A militant woman is as 
 futile as a militant church. 
 
 The boy who is accustomed to an atmosphere 
 such as I have described knows no other law, since 
 the impression received in boyhood continues to 
 govern the man's estimate of the conduct proper 
 for a woman. But the American boy who has
 
 30 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 been sedulously taught by the spoken and printed 
 word that the American girl is the highest pro- 
 duct of civilization, a miracle of beauty, conduct, 
 and character, does not for ever retain this illu- 
 sion, — at least one out of twelve does not, after 
 an intimate experience lasting 6.42 years, accord- 
 ing to the best statistics available. 
 
 So amazing a statement demands authority. It 
 is nothing less than the United States Census 
 Bulletin : " The divorce-rate per 100,000 popula- 
 tion increased from 29 in 1870 to 82 in 1905. In 
 the former year there was one divorce for every 
 3,441 persons, and in the latter year one for every 
 1,218. Since it is only married people who can 
 become divorced, a more significant divorce-rate 
 is that which is based, not upon total population, 
 but upon the total married population. The rate 
 per 100,000 married population was 81 in the 
 year 1870 and 200 in the year 1900. This com- 
 parison indicates that divorce is at present two and 
 one half times as common, compared with married 
 population, as it was forty years ago. A divorce- 
 rate of 200 per 100,000 married population is 
 equivalent to two per 1,000 married population. 
 Assuming that 1,000 married people represent 500 
 married couples, it follows that in each year four 
 married couples out of every 1,000 secure a di-
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 31 
 
 vorce. This does not mean that only four mar- 
 riages out of 1,000 are terminated by divorce. The 
 rate, it will be noted, is an annual rate, continu- 
 ously operative, and comes far short of measuring 
 the probability of ultimate divorce. The available 
 data indicate, however, that not less than one 
 marriage in 12 is ultimately terminated by di- 
 vorce." From this loosening of the marriage tie 
 it is women who eventually suffer. If divorce oc- 
 casionally frees them from a cruel bondage, more 
 often it makes men familiar with the idea of that 
 last infamy, the desertion of the woman in her 
 distress. 
 
 The root of the matter is that this brood of 
 women is lawless — without law. The law is that 
 the physically weak are subject to the physically 
 strong. By no subterfuge, or evasion, or resort 
 to simile, analogy, or hyperbole can weak be con- 
 verted into strong. Things are as they are because 
 the world of life has grown up under this law. The 
 " American Woman" proclaims that by reason of 
 her strength of intellect, her profundity of affec- 
 tion, her dazzling beauty, and the height of her 
 emotion, she has emancipated herself. Even if she 
 were in possession of all these qualities, — and 
 that in itself is an assumption, — that would not 
 involve her freedom. But the American man has
 
 32 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 acquiesced in this declaration of rights, and the 
 woman is without the shelter which her weakness 
 gives. 
 
 There is a nice balance in nature. The strong 
 and the weak exist side by side, because the weak 
 know that they are weak and conduct themselves 
 accordingly. They acquire a caution, a pretty cun- 
 ning, an adaptability to their surroundings. They 
 learn to evade what they cannot resist, to avoid 
 what they cannot master, because they are aware 
 that resistance is stupidity and means destruction. 
 Let us take note of the fact that the man is not 
 subject to the elephant, because the physical 
 strength of the beast is outmatched by skill, 
 knowledge, and intelligence. The qualities by 
 which a woman attains to mastery are not those 
 by which a man arrives at an understanding with 
 an elephant. Her natural resources, those by which 
 she will prevail, are gentleness, long-suffering, 
 kindness ; and it is no stain upon her intelligence 
 to employ them. When she abandons these, she 
 does not necessarily, in the present stage of civ- 
 ilization, lose her life. She merely becomes an 
 " American Woman," and in striving for her 
 " rights " she loses her influence, and gives us a 
 new reading of the old fable of the bone and its 
 shadow.
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 33 
 
 The world has never been In possession o£ more 
 than five main ideas at any one time and is not 
 now in possession of any more. These ideas came 
 very early in the history of the race ; indeed they 
 may have appeai-ed at a time when there were in 
 existence only one man and two women or two 
 women and one man, since all society is merely 
 an extension of these factors, and all literature a 
 record of their behaviour. 
 
 All but one of these ideas came from the East. 
 The only idea which we have originated is that 
 a man who may know nothing about anything else 
 knows all about government. These western com- 
 munities have achieved much in the way of com- 
 plicating existence by the utilization of natural 
 forces, and have assumed that they were generat- 
 ing new ideas. But when finally they arrive at the 
 limit of that accomplishment with which they are 
 now most concerned, and men are enabled to fly 
 through the air like a bird or a dragon, they may 
 reflect upon the matter, and conclude that these 
 contrivances have no meaning, the conclusion at 
 which that amiable and amusing Preacher arrived, 
 that this also is vanity, and that old fallacies are 
 not new ideas. 
 
 To correct our taste in poetry, we have resort to 
 the poets who made their verse when life was yet
 
 34 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 simple, so simple that the suitors for the greatest 
 heroine of all times lay upon the ground without 
 her door, and cast scraps of food to their snarling 
 dogs ; when men were resolute to lose their lives 
 for their country because they loved it so, and 
 gloried in those achievements which saved their 
 race from destruction ; when, in short, the fear of 
 the gods was strong upon them. 
 
 Similarly, to correct our view of life we 
 must compare it with the view which it pre- 
 sented to men in an earlier and clearer me- 
 dium, when they saw life naked, and recorded 
 with truthfulness what they saw. Happily these 
 records are open to our inspection in the writings 
 of the Hellenes, and more clearly in those writ- 
 ings which are commonly called the Scriptures 
 of that portion of the Semitic race which occu- 
 pied Lower Asia. These Hebrews were especially 
 concerned with conduct, as we are at the mo- 
 ment, since nearly all conduct — bad as well as 
 good — is determined by the authority of the 
 woman. 
 
 There have always been persons in the world 
 who believed that these Scriptures were true : 
 it is only during the lifetime of men now living 
 that we have learned how true they are, — and 
 that, by the simple discovery that the writers of
 
 • THE AMERICAN WOMAN 35 
 
 them were mainly concerned about this world, 
 whilst formerly it was believed that they were 
 speaking about another world, of which they had 
 no more information than we ourselves enjoy. 
 
 A writer of whom it is assumed that he knows 
 everything about everything eventually arrives 
 at that point where it is assumed that he knows 
 nothing about anything. These Hebrew writers 
 made no such pretence, but it has taken us nearly 
 twenty centuries to apprehend that they spoke in 
 good faith, that some things they saw as if re- 
 flected darkly in a mirror, and others as arising 
 naked out of human experience. We may be per- 
 mitted to distrust the account which they give 
 of the creation of the world and all that lives 
 therein, and yet give full assent to the truth, 
 awful in its simplicity, which is contained in such 
 sentences as, a thousand years are but as one 
 day ; all is vanity ; righteousness exalteth a na- 
 tion ; the woman who has a veil on her head 
 wears authority on her head. It is this last saying 
 which I am endeavouring to expound, because 
 it is the one whose truth is the most obscurely 
 hidden from this generation. 
 
 It is a common charge that the present status 
 of women is due to the influence of Christianity. 
 I do not think that this statement is entirely jus-
 
 36 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 tified, but it will bear investigation. In the out- 
 set one must admit that the status of women in 
 these Christian countries differs from that which 
 prevails in Turkey and from that which did pre- 
 vail in ancient Greece. The legal position of the 
 woman is more assured in Turkey than in any 
 other country. At marriage she receives a sepa- 
 rate estate from her husband, and he has no 
 future control over it. It remains with her even 
 if she should be divorced, and she has the entire 
 disposal by gift or by testament of all property 
 acquired before marriage. She can sue her hus- 
 band and be sued by him. He is obliged to main- 
 tain his wife according to his means. It is custom- 
 ary to state in the marriage settlement the amount 
 which shall be allowed for household expenses, 
 and the husband has no right to enquire into the 
 details of the expenditure. It may well be under- 
 stood that the practice of polygamy has fallen 
 into desuetude, since no sensible Turk would 
 willingly put himself at the legal mercy of more 
 women than one. 
 
 An assured legal status does not necessarily 
 confer domestic authority amongst ourselves. It 
 is due to other circumstances entirely, probably 
 the wearing of the veil and all which is implied 
 thereby, that the Turkish woman exercises a
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 37 
 
 power in the household which to us would ap- 
 pear tyrannical. Her husband may not come 
 into her presence without her consent. Her sons, 
 though bearded men, may not sit down in her 
 presence, without first seeking her permission. 
 The younger women may not take their places at 
 table until she is seated. And yet the news comes 
 that even with all these rights and privileges the 
 Turkish woman is not content. Hitherto she has 
 been under no other obligation than to behave 
 herself with decency ; but since the events of July 
 24th, 1908, she is demanding her liberty, that is, 
 the liberty of exchanging the bone for the shadow. 
 The first thing the Turkish women did when the 
 regulations were relaxed was to cast aside their 
 veils and assemble in a public place to demand 
 "the same rights and the same position as that 
 which European women hold." The correspond- 
 ent of the "Neues Wiener Tageblatt," who re- 
 lates the occurrence, adds with mistaken glee 
 that " the scene and the sight of the small, white 
 hands sparkling with jewels and clapping with 
 enthusiasm took him to Madison Square into a 
 meetins: of the free women of America." 
 
 From China also comes disturbing news which 
 to some betokens augury of better things. Clubs 
 have been formed under the pretext of opposing
 
 38 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 the fashion of " little feet," but now the members 
 proclaim themselves " women who intend to fol- 
 low their own will." This movement towards 
 " emancipation " appears to find favour in high 
 quarters, for an Imperial edict has gone forth that 
 " women ought not to pass their life in eating and 
 gossiping." 
 
 We have seen that in Turkey the women pos- 
 sess both an assured legal position and domestic 
 authority. In Hellas, however, they had domestic 
 authority without the legal status. The Greek 
 women had no rights, but were completely in the 
 power of the men. They were extraordinarily 
 meek ; but, if we can believe what we read, never 
 were women subjected to a rule so gentle and so 
 gracious, and never were there women who ap- 
 peared so perfect and so happy. Affection, regard, 
 and deference was their portion. Whatever they 
 did was right ; if they appeared to do wrong, a man 
 was to blame for enticing them or a god for afflict- 
 ing them with madness. It was also regarded as 
 a sign of madness that one should find fault with 
 her husband, if we can trust the account which 
 Sophocles puts into the mouth of Dejanira. For 
 Helen herself, who brought so many disasters 
 upon her race, there is no word of blame. Nor 
 indeed is there much blame for Paris, — she was
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 39 
 
 so beautiful he could not help his rash conduct. 
 Even against Clytemnestra, though a willing 
 accomplice in the crime of murder, there is little 
 of evil said. The Greek attitude, I believe, is in 
 the main correct : whatever the woman is or 
 does, it is the fault of the man. We who live in 
 these days have no especial reason to be proud 
 of our achievement ; but we shall see what will 
 happen to the women who in increasing numbers 
 are now taking their management into their own 
 hands. 
 
 The two great Greek poems are full of heroic 
 affection and indeed are founded upon it. It was the 
 meekness and submission of the women which 
 created the heroism in the men. In order that there 
 should be no difference of opinion it was decreed 
 that the husband should appear to rule : " There is 
 nothing better and nobler than when husband and 
 wife, being of one mind, rule a household." Yet 
 the influence of these meek women upon public 
 affairs was greater than the influence of women 
 at any time of which we have knowledge. Helen 
 and Briseis are the central figures in the Trojan 
 War ; Penelope is easily greater than Ulysses ; 
 Arete is the great peace-maker ; Clytemnestra 
 and Chloris were queens in the absence of their 
 husbands ; and there is a saying attributed to
 
 40 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 Themistocles : " All men rule their wives ; we 
 rule all men ; and we are ruled by our wives." 
 
 There is nothing more beautiful in literature 
 than the accounts which the great Greek writers 
 give of the character, and conduct, and influence 
 of these women who were without any legal status 
 in the community. We must except, of course, 
 some of the comic writers, who then, as now, are 
 willing at any cost to raise a laugh from the gap- 
 ing mouths of prurient men ; but even Aristo- 
 phanes boasts that he had never put a bad heroine 
 in his plays, a practice which the modern novelist 
 would do well to emulate. The greatness of the 
 Athenians was due to the great simplicity of the 
 Athenian woman : and " great is the glory of that 
 woman who is least talked of among men, either 
 in the way of praise or blame." They found their 
 ideal in "the woman who stayed inside and was 
 obedient to her husband." Consequently their 
 sons were worthy of obedience, which ours are 
 not. 
 
 But, more important, these Greek women ap- 
 pear to have been happy. Helen apparently was 
 not especially miserable in Troy. She appears as 
 an interested spectator on the walls of the belea- 
 guered city ; and after the death of Paris she 
 returns to her husband, Menelaus, as if nothing
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 41 
 
 unusual bad happened. But she was always busy, 
 twirling the distaff and plying the loom. A prin- 
 cess did not disdain to make the clothing for her 
 relatives, to embroider it beautifully, and keep 
 it clean. That happy day which Nausicaa spent 
 will readily recur to the mind. It must have been 
 a busy day as she collected the clothes in the 
 car and drove the mules, whip in hand, to the 
 washing-trenches near the river ; as she with her 
 maiden attendants sent the mules to grass whilst 
 they trod the garments with their feet, and spread 
 them out to dry. To this they added a picnic, 
 a game of ball, and singing. Here is a day with 
 Homeric girls, as Dr. Donaldson remarks with 
 pei"haps more unction than one would expect in 
 the Principal of the University of St. Andrews. 
 
 To complete the demonstration that the pre- 
 sent status of women is not due essentially to 
 Christianity, we may cite the case of the Roman 
 woman. I am not speaking, of course, of those 
 women against whom Juvenal levelled his satire, 
 but of those whom he employed as standards of 
 true womanhood, if one must employ a phrase 
 which has fallen from its high meaning. The 
 Roman matron, unlike the Athenian, was mis- 
 tress in the home, and was supreme in a domes- 
 tic authority by which she enforced diligence and
 
 42 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 reverence. The course of events was quite differ- 
 ent in the two cities. In Athens the woman re- 
 trograded from a condition of voluntary captivity 
 to one of domestic restraint. In Rome there was 
 a progress from despotic control to domestic free- 
 dom achieved by the capacity and resolution of 
 the women. Marriage became a contract and free- 
 dom was its essence. The father gave to his 
 daughter a dowry which was ample for her sup- 
 port. Any other property which she possessed re- 
 mained entirely within her control, even after the 
 dissolution of the contract, an event which was 
 happening continually. But this parade of learn- 
 ing merely enforces the truth that all women 
 are much alike, and men too, for the matter of 
 that, whether they be Pagans, Mussulmans, or 
 Christians. 
 
 The present situation of women Is a result not 
 of Christianity, but of all those forces, industrial, 
 economic, and social, which go to form what we 
 call our civilization; and I suppose no one is so 
 far left to himself as to affirm that the con- 
 dition of society under which we live is a pre- 
 cise and logical result of the adoption of those 
 principles which the Founder of Christianity 
 enunciated. To demonstrate fully the truth of this 
 assertion would be to write the history of civili-
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 43 
 
 zatlon and the history of Christianity, which is 
 not the immediate intention. 
 
 In point of fact the position of the woman after 
 four centuries of Christianity was more degraded 
 than it was in the first. In the narrative of the 
 Apostles there is much which is charming in the 
 account which is given of her activities. The sis- 
 ters of Bethany, the woman at the well, the bride 
 and guests of Cana, the sinner with the box of 
 ointment, even the women of the Garden were 
 thoroughly humane persons, and the family life 
 was sound. These were humble, decent people, 
 however, and the greatest fallacy in history is to 
 judge the conduct of the people of whom we know 
 nothing by the conduct of those of whom we hear 
 a great deal. To make such inference is as absurd, 
 I say it with a reiteration which must be tiresome, 
 as if we were to measure the life of the home-lov- 
 ing women of America by the standards which 
 prevail in the heart of her whom I have chosen 
 with some degree of ambiguity, it may be, to clas- 
 sify apart as the "American Woman." 
 
 On the other hand, the persons to whom the 
 message came late in the first century were the 
 offscouring of the Greek cities : adulterers, drunk- 
 ards, and others who were guilty of practices which 
 are not so much as named amongst ourselves. At
 
 44 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 least this Is the description which Paul gives of 
 his early followers: "Such were some of you." 
 To the Greeks religion was an affair of ritual. 
 Henceforth it was to be a sanctification of the 
 body, and unchastity, as being the most obvious 
 of all lusts, was discredited. Horrified by the 
 promiscuity of living which he witnessed, Paul 
 went to the opposite extreme and put on the 
 character of the rabbi, the monk, the ascetic. 
 Besides, he was under the impression that the 
 world w;as so near its end, it was not worth the 
 trouble of adding to the race. There were already 
 enough in jeopardy of their souls. He declared 
 that there is something unclean in marriage ; that 
 marriage defiles both parties to it; that at best 
 it is a compromise between chastity and the weak- 
 ness of the flesh, better than one thing, worse than 
 another, but that celibacy and virginity are best 
 of all, for which he is not forgiven by women even 
 to this day. It is not a matter of observation, in 
 these days at least, that bachelors are spiritually 
 minded above all men. 
 
 The Greek view of life led to immorality. Paul 
 chose a different path ; he ended by a clear per- 
 ception of the conditions suitable for a healthy 
 and faithful family life, in which the children at 
 least should be holy ; and yet one of the most pite-
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 45 
 
 ous things in history is the tragedy of domestic 
 life disrupted by the entrance of a religion which 
 compelled a brother to deliver up a brother to 
 death, and the father his child, which set a man 
 at variance with his father, the daughter against 
 her mother and the daughter-in-law against her 
 mother-in-law, and when a man's foes most to be 
 feared were those of his own household. In face 
 of this declaration we need not go to Tertullian 
 to find that the event fell out no otherwise. 
 
 Though towards the end of his life Paul modi- 
 fied his earlier opinions, perhaps under the influ- 
 ence of those female fellow-labourers of whom he 
 speaks so handsomely, by the fourth century they 
 had regained full force in the Church, and one 
 Father at least, Clement of Alexandria, is so down- 
 right in his utterances that they may well be left 
 in the indecency of the original Latin in which 
 they were written. 
 
 One could fill a book with the denunciations of 
 women which are to be found in the writings of 
 the Christian Fathers for five hundred years, and 
 they are directed not against a limited class, nor 
 against any particular misconduct, — as is the 
 practice of all the satirists, — but against women 
 as a whole. Much of it is vulgar abuse, and much 
 is savage ferocity. Children shared equally in this
 
 46 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 theological hatred, and in the first five centuries 
 of Christian literature there is no suggestion of 
 family life, of domestic felicity, in a word, of the 
 home. Women and children were banished from 
 the world of Christianity, and the inevitable result 
 occurred. The theological male, unappeased by 
 the female, and untouched by the appealing help- 
 lessness of the child, developed a ferocity of na- 
 ture which showed itself eventually in the auto- 
 da-fe, and which has been extinguished only in 
 our own time. It is through the revival of natural, 
 family affection, a virtue which is Pagan as well 
 as Christian, that women have finally attained to 
 eqnal consideration. When affection diminishes, 
 that balance is disturbed. 
 
 The position of the woman in the early Church 
 was a subject of bitter controversy, until it was 
 set at rest by the great Apostle. Paul, himself 
 an Oriental, though brought up in a Hellenic 
 and Roman environment, was scandalized by the 
 conduct of the Greek women in the assemblages. 
 They would not keep quiet, neither would they 
 speak one at a time. To allow the men to speak 
 was out of the question. Accustomed to the seclu- 
 sion and seemliness in which his own womenkind 
 dwelt, he was offended by the shamelessness of 
 the Greek costume, and he set forth that dogma
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 47 
 
 in which is contained one of those main ideas of 
 which I was speaking : The woman who has a veil 
 on her head wears authority on her head. 
 
 The East had meditated long upon the au- 
 thority of the woman, and concluded that it was 
 enhanced if it was allowed to remain mysterious. 
 With all our pretensions to a chivalrous adora- 
 tion of that quality which in the United States is 
 called " womanhood," we do not yield to women 
 such deference as is paid to the humblest Eastern 
 peasant so long as she wears the veil. They suffer 
 by not hearing the truth. For the sake of peace 
 feeble men make it their business to console them ; 
 and as Dr. Trublet remarks in"L'Histoire Co- 
 mique," how can you console a person without 
 adopting the practice of lying? Not deference 
 but flattery and fatuous adulation is the portion 
 of the Western woman, because her authority is 
 weakened, whilst the history of the East is filled 
 with accounts, strange to us, of the influence of 
 women upon men and events. The names of 
 Herodias, Jezebel, and Eve will again recur to 
 the mind. 
 
 The veil of the Eastern woman is a sign of her 
 mystery. When she discards the veil, her sanc- 
 tity, her honour, her dignity, her authority all 
 vanish. I shall not be guilty of the absurdity
 
 48 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 whicli there would be in recommending that 
 women who of an afternoon drive in the Park or 
 walk in the Avenue should swathe their heads in 
 Oriental wrapping ; but the light can be a veil 
 as well as the dai^kness. In a brilliant room one 
 sees nothing of the foulness which lurks without. 
 Every woman is created with a veil. She is an 
 eternal mystery, as even Byron confessed after 
 his assiduous research. Gentleness, and goodness, 
 and continual quietness, and beauty of nature are 
 always mysterious. I am not saying that all wo- 
 men are in possession of these qualities. Indeed 
 it is the very absence of them which makes the 
 veil a greater necessity. The assemblage of boys 
 with girls for education, as it is called with some 
 degree of assumption, withdraws the veil and 
 serves to dispel this mystery. The rude comrade- 
 ship which athletics engender is based upon the 
 performance of physical feats in which the woman 
 is always at a disadvantage, and so is inferior. 
 
 Finally, those Platonic friendships between 
 young men and young women, which, according 
 to the judicious saying of the Master of Peter- 
 house, are always silly and sometimes dangerous, 
 weaken the force of the old truth, that, male and 
 female created he them. Little by little the mys- 
 tery is dispelled — by a furtive glance, a word,
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 49 
 
 an apparently accidental touch. The veil is rent, 
 and the woman is naked and ashamed, or un- 
 ashamed, as the case may be. 
 
 A man expects very little of a woman, nothing 
 more than that she shall willingly receive kind- 
 ness at his hands, that she will permit herself to 
 be loved. Little as this is, it is much. Without it 
 he is condemned to a brutish isolation, wandering 
 between the confines of asceticism and profligacy. 
 Human civilization, which appears to our minds 
 as a very imposing affair, is possibly the result of 
 circumstances which may have been little more 
 than fortuitous. It is surmised that agriculture 
 had its beginnings in the desire for alcohol, and 
 that the wearing of clothes was a result of the 
 discovery that articles of adornment gave a sense 
 of warmth. Similarly, I think that all the graces 
 of our civilization, all those acquired characteris- 
 tics which distinguished men from beasts, arose 
 from the desire to win this privilege of bestowing 
 affection. 
 
 It is not the love of the woman for the man, but 
 the love of the man for everything, the woman in- 
 cluded, which redeems him. This dark saying is 
 elucidated by that revelation of human experience 
 which has come down to us in the jruise of the 
 Faust legend, not the debased thing as presented
 
 50 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 by Gounod, which we, with our capacity for being 
 exactly wrong, call " Faust " and the Germans in 
 derision designate "Margarethe." This "Faust" 
 of ours, as Professor Patchett so acutely observes, 
 is nothing more than the account of the seduction 
 of an ingenuous girl by a rejuvenated professor 
 having the powers of hell at his command. The 
 Faust of Goethe attains to mastery over himself 
 through the " ewig-weibliche," the eternal femi- 
 nine, the woman-soul, which is synonymous with 
 love into which the element of sex does not intrude 
 itself. It is the complete abnegation of all selfish- 
 ness. There is nothing new in this either : it is 
 precisely the doctrine of perfect love which Jesus 
 taught. 
 
 The " American Woman " thinks the American 
 man is as good as he is because she loves him so 
 much. She is so self-satisfied, she thinks that every- 
 one must love her and must continue to love her, 
 entirely irrespective of the conduct which she may 
 choose to indulge in. A husband who should cease 
 to love so glorious a creature must be a fool whose 
 love is not worth striving to retain. She is fond 
 of boasting of her womanly influence for good ; 
 and yet no public life is more corrupt than that 
 which she dominates, no domestic life more thin, 
 and narrow, and poor.
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 51 
 
 Men have always known wherein this authority 
 lay and the power which it possessed ; but women 
 have never been satisfied with the explanation 
 which they received. They have been looking con- 
 tinually for a fresh solution of a problem which 
 was solved before Solomon was yet born. They 
 suspected that their authority lay in education, 
 and they tried that ; in a new legal status, and 
 enactments were made ; in admission to all trades 
 and professions, and the doors were opened. The 
 latest guess is that this authority will be perma- 
 nently fixed by the right to put a piece of paper in 
 a ballot-box ; and yet I fear that their experience 
 will be that of the aged negro who had exercised 
 this precious function for the first time. When 
 the mysterious rite was completed and nothing 
 happened, he turned to the guardian of the poll 
 and enquired pathetically, " Is that all, boss ? " 
 
 The influence of woman is the subject of all 
 verse, and is best expressed by the word " charm." 
 The matter has full discussion in that debate 
 which is recorded in the Book of Esdras as having 
 taken place in the second year of the reign of 
 Darius the King, at a time, it may be remarked, 
 when our own ancestors were occupying their 
 minds with less intellectual pursuits. The ques- 
 tion was : " What is the greatest thing in the
 
 52 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 world ? — wine, the king, woman, or truth." The 
 argument is very familiar: "Do not men labour 
 and toil and give and bring all to the woman ? 
 Yea, the man taketh his sword and goeth his 
 way to rob and to steal, to sail upon the sea and 
 upon rivers ; and when he hath stolen, spoiled, 
 and robbed, he bringeth it all to his love. What 
 power hath reason against her charm ? " 
 
 And what is charm ? Certain things it is not. 
 It is not excessive talkativeness, nor that distor- 
 tion of the countenance in public places which is 
 called laughter. Not intellectual attainment nor 
 the artistic temperament ensures its possession. It 
 does not necessarily lie in the physical beauty of 
 a symmetrical musculature. Teeth, and ej'es, and 
 hair are mere epidermal modifications. Charm is 
 everything which the " American Woman " thinks 
 it is not ; charm lies in what a woman is, not in 
 what she does, nor in how she looks. I am not 
 sufficiently instructed to hazard an opinion upon 
 the question whether this charm is as general and 
 as potent as it used to be, although there is some 
 evidence which is not confirmatory in what one 
 hears, and in what one reads in the law reports 
 and in the poet-books. And what has a man to 
 offer a woman in return for her adorable quali- 
 ties? Nothing beyond this, that "the husband
 
 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 53 
 
 render to the wife due benevolence." By no pro- 
 cess of bargaining can she obtain more. 
 
 The American women — all women — should 
 turn upon the "American Woman" as judges and 
 executioners, with cold, deliberate indignation, in 
 such virgin fury as the workers in the hive dis- 
 play towards the great, idle, sugary-mouthed 
 drones unconscious on the melliferous walls. 
 And happily, there is evidence that the people 
 are tired of the farce, that the lights are out and 
 the audience gone home. This revulsion of feel- 
 ing is led by the really educated women, who are 
 willing to confess that even they themselves have 
 missed the mark and that their humbler sisters 
 have chosen the better part. For the ignorant 
 and newly rich the educated women have nothing 
 but compassion : for those who would emancipate 
 themselves from the law they have infinite scorn. 
 
 The woman who is happy is she who obeys the 
 law of kindness, who goes quietly. Her husband 
 yields her benevolence. His heart doth safely 
 trust in her, and her children call her blessed. 
 The woman who will prevail is the effeminate 
 woman, who overcomes man by the force of con- 
 tinual quietness. She may understand all know- 
 ledge and have strength to remove all public griev- 
 ances ; yet she is nothing, if she has not entered
 
 54 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 into the mystery of gentleness. The woman who 
 suffers long and is kind, who envietli not, who 
 vaunteth not herself and is not puffed up, who 
 does not behave herself unseemly, who seeketh 
 not her own, who thinketh no evil, beareth all 
 things and is not easily provoked, — it is she who 
 finally attains to consideration.
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUF- 
 FRAGETTE
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE 
 SUFFRAGETTE 
 
 Few problems are so simple as they seem. Indeed 
 all questions are one question, and the ready 
 answer which appears final may be entirely 
 inadequate when the enquiry is enlarged to its 
 proper bounds. An imperfect reason is worse than 
 no reason at all. If, for example, the function of 
 voting has not, up to the present time, been en- 
 trusted to women, it is because the case in favour 
 of that measure has not been properly presented. 
 
 The argument has been too feminine, too easily 
 met. If we say that women should have the privi- 
 lege of voting, we are struck with the retort that 
 voting is not a privilege but a duty. If we point 
 to the anomaly of a woman, intellectual as George 
 Eliot and sensitive as Mrs. Browning, being 
 deprived of a privilege which her husband's 
 valet enjoys, the explanation is offered that the 
 difficulty may be solved as well by taking the 
 vote away from the man as by giving it to the 
 woman. 
 
 When we protest that the suffrage should be 
 conferred upon the married woman who in her
 
 58 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 own right is in possession of property, we are in- 
 formed that the family, not the individual, is the 
 unit of society ; and if we restrict our demand to 
 votes for unmarried women alone, we involve our- 
 selves in a controversy with the friends of Mrs. 
 Browning, on the one hand, and of George Eliot, 
 on the other, to say nothing of the members of 
 that most ancient of all professions, who must be 
 considerable property owners to pay the contri- 
 butions which are habitually imposed upon them. 
 If a property qualification would admit Judas, 
 universal suffrage would admit the Woman at the 
 Well; but the principle of votes for married 
 women would involve us in a consideration of 
 their matrimonial status, about which there might 
 well be a difference of opinion, especially in a 
 community like the United States of America, in 
 which one marriage out of every twelve is termi- 
 nated by divorce. 
 
 We plead that wage-earning women who are 
 economically independent of men by reason of 
 their labour in shop, office, and factory should no 
 longer be compelled to remain voiceless : the dis- 
 sentients reply that the presence of women in 
 those capacities is an anomaly of civilization, which 
 will not be remedied by the creation of a fresh 
 anomaly. When we offer them one of these alter-
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 69 
 
 natives : If women are different from men, repre- 
 sentative government without including them is 
 incompletely representative of the State ; If wo- 
 men are the same as men, then presumably they 
 have the same need to vote as men, — they suggest 
 that we substitute "lunatics" for "women" and 
 see how the propositions read. 
 
 As answer to our argument that a woman who 
 has acquired a University degree is more likely 
 to vote intelligently than a man who is unable to 
 decipher the name of a candidate upon the ballot 
 and whose attainment in writing does not extend 
 beyond the capacity to sign his name with a cross, 
 we are informed with coarse brutality that the 
 propriety of a college education for women is 
 problematical and its advantage a matter of pure 
 surmise. And finally, if we protest that character 
 is the supreme test of fitness to vote or hold office, 
 we are filled with apprehension against the day 
 when the fierce light of publicity will beat upon 
 the Woman at the Booth, when opposing news- 
 papers will investigate her conduct to ascertain if 
 she is truthful in her declarations before the Cus- 
 toms ; for example, if she rules well her own house- 
 hold, having children and having them in subjec- 
 tion, the wife of one husband, of good behaviour, 
 patient, not a brawler, not double-tongued, grave,
 
 60 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 sober, faithful in all things. The feminine char- 
 acter is notoriously difficult of investigation, and 
 it must be estimated according to the fine standard 
 of feminine perfection, and not by the coarse 
 attainment of the best of public men. 
 
 If we rely upon authority and appeal to John 
 Stuart Mill, our opponents remind us that this 
 great moralist attained to a surety of conviction 
 upon the propriety of female suffrage only after 
 he had come under the ministration of that humane 
 person, Mrs. Taylor, " a woman of surpassing 
 excellence, who lived generally apart from her 
 husband." 
 
 When the enemies of woman suffrage have de- 
 parted from this attitude of stolid indifference or 
 obstinate contradiction and put forward initial 
 objections of their own, we have always been able 
 to make reply. They protest that the polling- 
 booth, the legislative chamber, and the barber's 
 shop are no fit resorts for women ; and we call to 
 their attention that women have made themselves 
 perfectly at home in other environments which 
 appeared at first sight to be equally uncongenial, 
 in the club, in street-processions, and in the 
 smoking-room of steamers. 
 
 Not content with contradiction, they have resort 
 to mockery, alleging that, if women had votes,
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 61 
 
 they would cast them for the candidate who had 
 a fine general aspect and an external appearance 
 which was pleasing. It is our sufficient answer 
 that candidates are elected by the present method 
 for reasons which are equally flimsy, and that 
 under the new arrangements a House of Repre- 
 sentatives would be composed of men who would 
 at least be beautiful, whereas to-day they are 
 neither beautiful nor good. They charge that a 
 man who has a wife and daughter would then 
 have three votes instead of one ; yet that is not 
 more unreasonable than the present arrangement 
 under which men purchase voters and send them 
 to the polls like driven cattle. When mockery 
 fails they descend to ridicule even of martyrs, 
 laughter at heroines, and mirth, because a suffra- 
 gette of her own volition assumed and continues 
 to bear the name of Catt. 
 
 Having now at the expense of some labour 
 cleared the ground, I shall endeavour to set forth 
 the psychology of the suffragette, not in the in- 
 terest of pure science so much as with the inten- 
 tion of discovering if an examination of the female 
 nature will not yield a fundamental reason why 
 such women as so desire should be permitted to 
 vote, to hold office, and to engage in public life. 
 To warrant so important a departure from the
 
 62 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 established order of society, nothing less than a 
 fundamental reason will suffice ; that is, one which 
 has been valid ever since the advent of life upon 
 the earth, or, at any rate, of beings which have 
 the appearance of movement. 
 
 Of this creation we have two accounts. The 
 one is given by a Semitic writer of Lower Asia, 
 whose name is unknown to us. The other, which 
 is the more commonly received, is closely identi- 
 fied with the name of Professor MacBride. The 
 two accounts may be reconciled by assuming that 
 the word " beginning " means a second beginning. 
 By this easy device of exegesis we discover that 
 in Professor MacBride's "beginning" there was 
 neither male nor female, nothing' but a neutral 
 protoplasmic mass. In the second " beginning " 
 there was a differentiation between the two sexes. 
 
 Leaving the ground of authority, and appeal- 
 ing to scientific experience, we shall discover that 
 the male was developed out of this mass with 
 special characteristics for the convenience of the 
 less modified organism which remained. A timely 
 confirmation of this statement arises out of Dr. 
 Rumley Dawson's recent discovery in physiology, 
 that the causation of sex lies entirely with the fe- 
 male ; and we can well understand why she should 
 be so resolute to preserve the type which she has
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 63 
 
 created, by offering to the most manly the prize 
 of her possession, and passing over the type which 
 has the closest resemblance to her own. 
 
 And yet, it is only for convenience we assume 
 that nature works within rigid bounds. We speak 
 of spring, summer, autumn, and winter for the 
 benefit of those who sow seed, pay rent, and per- 
 form the other duties of society, whereas in real- 
 ity there are no recurring seasons, but an unend- 
 ing progress of time. This division of living 
 beings into male and female is also a fiction. All 
 we should say is that the characteristics of the 
 male or of the female are especially predominant 
 in any given individual. The truth of this state- 
 ment is apparent if we scan the range of plant 
 life ; and even in the case of the lower animals it 
 is only a little less obvious. That is a matter of 
 common knowledge, but its cogency when applied 
 to ourselves demands a word by way of illustra- 
 tion. There are persons who are anatomically 
 males and psychically females, that is, with the 
 outward appearance of men and the minds of 
 women. They write letters to the newspapers, and 
 the most experienced editor falls into error in 
 determining the sex of the writer. These persons 
 who lack in maleness always ally themselves with 
 women who possess the quality in which they
 
 64 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 are deficient, and between the two the proper 
 complement is established. 
 
 On the other hand it is the residue of the male 
 element in the female which strives to express it- 
 self by the assumption of manly garb, voice, ges- 
 ture, and conduct ; though it is much easier for 
 a man to become a woman than it is for a woman 
 to become a man. In each there is something of 
 the other, but what that amount is in any one 
 individual could be determined only by a close 
 scrutiny and comparison with the results obtained 
 in a large number of observed cases. Certain 
 investigations demand minuteness of enquiry, 
 others, largeness of view. One might well write 
 a monograph upon the camel, the ostrich, or the 
 centaur based upon the results of a scientific ex- 
 amination of a few specimens, which up to a cer- 
 tain point would be quite complete and have great 
 value. This is the work of the anatomist in zo- 
 ology, or of the morphologist in botany, who con- 
 siders the lily in his laboratory rather than in the 
 field. The anthropologist who deals with mankind 
 in the mass, or the systemic botanist must not 
 taunt his fellow-investigator with want of experi- 
 ence in his own peculiar department, who is de- 
 barred by lack of facilities or even of inclination 
 from makinjr large numerical observations.
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 65 
 
 The male is what horticulturists designate as 
 a sport, with an ineradicable tendency to revert 
 to the female type, which is the more stable of 
 the two, less sensitive and therefore capable of 
 enduring discomfort, less intelligent and there- 
 fore guided more by instinct than by reason, less 
 troubled by those emotions which lead to self- 
 sacrifice for the good of the whole, more endur- 
 ing because less dominated by those principles 
 which are known as morality. Every civilization 
 which has passed away proceeded by the road to 
 effeminacy. That is the teaching of history, and 
 it is a matter of common observation in the in- 
 dividual who is becoming less virile. He forsakes 
 his fellows for the companionship of a woman. 
 He displays an extreme and foolish fondness, an 
 extravagant and servile devotion, which goes by 
 the name of uxoriousness. The phenomenon is 
 observed at every age, but is most common in the 
 extremes of life. We have all observed the young 
 husband who is blissfully content with the func- 
 tions of a lady's maid, and the old man whose 
 domestic duties are mainly those of a " hooker 
 up," as that humble office is technically called. 
 In his occasional intercourse with men he misses 
 the adulation to which he is accustomed, and 
 becomes at first dogmatic, then truculent, and
 
 66 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 finally by common consent is expelled from male 
 society. 
 
 The disturbance of this balance between the 
 sexes is more exaggerated in certain periods of 
 history than in others. It was most marked at 
 those stages of civilization in which the matri- 
 archal theory of government prevailed. This oc- 
 curred at a time when humanity was emerging 
 from savagery, when the chase as a means of live- 
 lihood was giving way to agricultural pursuits 
 and the domestication of animals, when articles 
 of adornment had fallen from their high purpose 
 and bred the debasing necessity for the warmth 
 and comfort of clothing. These three offices of 
 caring for animals, planting seeds, and making 
 clothes naturally fell to women. The calf, lamb, 
 or kid, an accidental product of the chase, was 
 brought home to the cave as an object of interest. 
 Its gambols of joy or its contortions in pain were 
 amusing to the women and children, and its life 
 was preserved as a solace from the tedium of 
 winter. From this it was an easy discovery that 
 the animal might reproduce its kind and afford, 
 by the food products which it yielded, sustenance 
 in time of need, and warmth after its body was 
 skinned and eaten. By an equally fortuitous 
 circumstance the advantages of a stable supply
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 67 
 
 of fruits from the earth must have been discovered. 
 The labour of the chase, which began as a sport 
 and ended as a necessity, became a piece of sport 
 again, to which the man might devote himself with 
 pleasure unalloyed by the fear of hunger. But 
 even a life of pure sport eventually palls upon 
 one, and the primitive man lapsed into a condi- 
 tion of idleness in which he was so inert that 
 women were obliged to imdertake the business of 
 government as well as of industry. They domi- 
 nated the religious system also; and the deities of 
 that period are always female. From this we may 
 deduce the law that the authority of the woman 
 prevails in direct proportion to her usefulness. 
 
 Men who are idle become debased. They for- 
 sake the quest of their hard ideal and turn aside 
 upon an easier way. By inertia alone they tend to 
 exaggerate the female element in themselves and 
 to become like women. This glorification of the 
 feminine finds its most modern expression in the 
 tenets of that new American sect set apart by a 
 woman, which contends that its founder has inter- 
 preted the feminine idea of God as eTesus inter- 
 preted the masculine idea. To this is added the 
 inconsequential corollary that the feminine is the 
 higher of the two ; and there is an illuminating 
 revelation of a somewhat general mind upon the
 
 68 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 question of motherhood in their theory that this 
 woman by a process of immaculate conception 
 brought forth a book. As if anticipating the ques- 
 tion, her great apologist admits, " You may ask 
 why this child did not come in human form as 
 did the Child of old," and he supplies the answer : 
 " Because it was not necessary." Out of a plain 
 New England woman they have made a great 
 wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, 
 and upon her head a crown of twelve stars, de- 
 livering the child which shall heal all nations. 
 At least that is how it appears in their own writ- 
 ings and painted windows. This sentiment is a 
 pure revival of paganism and recurs continually. 
 It brought the worship of the woman into the 
 Church during the renascence which occurred in 
 the fifteenth century, when the deity was expressed 
 by the term Dea. One may agree that women are 
 saints, and yet have a hesitancy of conviction that 
 they are gods. 
 
 Women have a sure instinct that this natural 
 tendency of men to exaggerate the feminine idea 
 and to become like women is perilous to the race. 
 It is women alone who prevent it from dominat- 
 ing the world, on account of their own inherent 
 distrust in it. This is well shown by the secret pity 
 which a woman entertains for a man who is about
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 69 
 
 to unite himself for life with one of her own sex. 
 A woman marries for the substantial reason that 
 she is enamoured of the institution of marriage : 
 a man marries because a certain personality is 
 attractive to him. If he would discover how flimsy 
 this reason appears to the woman who is the object 
 of attraction, he has only to hear the comments 
 which are made as she regales her friends with a 
 revelation of his mind as exposed in those writ- 
 ings which are commonly known as "love-letters" 
 and occasionally as "exhibits." 
 
 If, now, we can discover that the exercise by 
 women of the function of voting will tend to pre- 
 serve the male idea from merging into the femi- 
 nine, the case in favour of female suffrage will be 
 advanced, even if we are obliged to abandon the 
 ground upon which the measure has been defended, 
 namely, that it would make for efficiency of gov- 
 ernment and do something to remove the disabil- 
 ities which women as well as men now endure. 
 Suffragettes have come to believe that there is 
 something thaumaturgic or at least sacramentary 
 in the act of voting, that it has an inherent effi- 
 cacy and would confer upon public life an in- 
 ward and spiritual grace, whilst in reality it is 
 merely an ordinance without sanctity, an outward 
 and visible sign of something which may have no
 
 70 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 existence, and may be fraught with damnation to 
 those who perform it unworthily. 
 
 Voting is merely a method of expressing an 
 opinion. The result is good or bad, depending 
 upon the correctness of the opinions which the 
 voters entertain and their ability to enforce them. 
 The method has worked well in certain cases, 
 namely, those in which communities had discov- 
 ered the true principles of public policy by long 
 ages of experience in public affairs, by living a 
 life of freedom, resolute to maintain it even at 
 the cost of sacrificing the individual life. Certain 
 tribes from the shores of the North Sea which 
 afterwards developed into the Anglo-Saxon race 
 earned their freedom by remaining free. Every 
 man voted. The reeve with four men from each 
 township appeared at the hundred-mot to enforce 
 an opinion which was in reality a derivative from 
 the need and art of fighting. Other communi- 
 ties seized this weapon without paying the price 
 and it broke in their hands. The negroes of the 
 United States had the duty of voting thrust 
 upon them ; and one would be naive indeed who 
 should say that their condition was improved 
 thereby, or that they brought any great accession 
 of wisdom to the public councils. I am afraid 
 that the women who profess to believe that all
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 71 
 
 things will be made new by the easy device of 
 voting are following their senses under the delu- 
 sion that they are following the inexorable logic 
 of a long experience. 
 
 It is only those who are engaged in practical 
 politics who are aware how small a part voting 
 plays in the operation of government, and they 
 have devised an elaborate machinery to prevent 
 an expression of public opinion, or to thwart it 
 in the event of its getting out of hand. Many 
 women are sufficiently instructed in cynicism to 
 unmask the most plausible politician ; but women 
 of simplicity, having faith in all humanity, would 
 become unconscious dupes of the wily intriguer, 
 or willing victims of the honest reformer who is 
 himself deceived. Even if women were in posses- 
 sion of a correct theory of government, which in 
 itself is merely a matter of surmise, and were 
 resolved to lay aside all considerations of per- 
 sonal interest for the sake of giving true expres- 
 sion to it, they would yet be face to face with 
 those contrivances which exist for the purpose of 
 dulling the conscience and paralyzing the public 
 will. Men who are enthusiastic reformers of poli- 
 tics continually encounter the influence of the 
 under- world intriguer, the briber, the organizer 
 of self-interest; and it is entirely probable that
 
 72 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 in the new order women might be found who 
 would lend themselves for these base purposes, 
 if we can infer from the ease with which recruits 
 are obtained for purposes which are baser still. 
 
 Suffragettes are mistaken if they suppose that 
 their labour is ended when they pause in the 
 weary round of visits to dressmaker, manicure, 
 and masseuse, or interrupt their social and do- 
 mestic duties, for so much time as is required to 
 place a dainty ballot in a box. When they adven- 
 ture into the booth they plunge into the world of 
 politics and of crime, unaware that their innocent 
 act may be the means of depriving a rich corpo- 
 ration of its booty, a poor man of his food, a 
 worker of the right to live, a woman of her pro- 
 fession, or a criminal of his prey. They must not 
 erpect that, upon beholding the spectacle of a 
 suffragette about to vote, all these forces of self- 
 interest and of evil will run backward and fall to 
 the ground as dead men. 
 
 It is not the act of voting which emancipates 
 a people. They qualify themselves for voting 
 by remaining free. The negroes to whom I have 
 referred will be worthy to vote only when they 
 emancipate themselves from themselves. Their 
 political equality was thrust upon them, and it 
 has not done them much good. They were unable
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 73 
 
 to acquire freedom : they are unfit to exercise the 
 functions of free men. The immediate business to 
 which all suffragettes should address themselves 
 is to assist in this investigation of their own 
 minds, to ascertain if they really do desire free- 
 dom and are competent to achieve it, if indeed 
 they desire it so earnestly that they must needs 
 seize upon it without saying "by your leave," 
 and at one stroke emancipate themselves from 
 their own nature and from the restrictions which 
 from the beginning of time have been imposed 
 upon them by reason of the possession of that 
 nature. 
 
 All literature concerns itself with this investi- 
 gation of the nature of humanity, or rather the 
 soul of it, if one may risk the employment of so 
 ambiguous a word ; and, according to Browning, 
 little else is worth study save the development of 
 a soul. The consensus that an examination of the 
 soul of the female is an impolite, ungracious, or 
 impertinent act is a suggestion that she has none, 
 or at best, that she has one which does not merit 
 or will not endure such scrutiny. The process can 
 be carried on with entire impersonality, as men 
 investigate their own nature, and even if it lead 
 to self-depreciation, that also is good. The " capa- 
 bility and god-like reason " of the male is not the
 
 74 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 theme of " Hamlet," but rather an amplification 
 of the question and answer : " What is a man ? 
 If his chief good and market of his time be but 
 to sleep and feed, — a beast, no more, a beast, the 
 lord of beasts." And if in the nature of women 
 are found traces of the primitive woman, that 
 need not alarm them or us, though it may dispel 
 certain illusions to make way for fresh illusions 
 founded upon reality. 
 
 Men are quite free to confess that they have 
 not eradicated the savage instincts from their 
 hearts, that traces of the primitive man are ever 
 present with them, and they do not hesitate to 
 make open revelation of it in their stupid bru- 
 tality, in the joy with which they eat their food, 
 in their poor attempts at the decoration of their 
 persons by means of green hats and coloured 
 waistcoats, in their pitiable efforts to look fierce 
 by an arrangement of the vestige of hair which 
 yet survives, in the alacrity with which they im- 
 bibe intoxicants for the sake of casting off that 
 burden of morality which they have so painfully 
 acquired and which yet sits uneasily upon them. 
 But a woman, living in the minds of others, care- 
 ful not of what she is but of the impression which 
 she makes, is as anxious to conceal her identity 
 as she is to disguise the art of her adornment.
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 75 
 
 To get at the root of the matter, we must under- 
 stand the essential character of the feminine na- 
 ture, and if we discover that it is good, neutral, 
 or bad, we must remember that man has made it 
 so. The praise or blame is to us. Therefore we 
 are in reality investigating ourselves. There is a 
 German saying: From a woman you can learn 
 nothing of a woman. As Immanuel Kant ex- 
 plains it : woman does not betray her secret. And 
 yet, the only secret which is well kept is that 
 which is no secret at all. Possibly this is the rea- 
 son why women and Freemasons have been so 
 successful in guarding theirs. The revelation 
 which women in their writings make of them- 
 selves is incomplete because they are incapable 
 of that intellectual efPort by which complete 
 detachment is obtained. All the " Confessions " 
 have been done by men, St. Augustine, Mon- 
 taigne, Pepys, Rousseau, Amiel, and by those 
 immodest writers of the past ten years whose 
 confessions are so tiresome because they have so 
 little to confess, and therefore experience none of 
 that reminiscitory pleasure which makes the con- 
 fessional so popular. 
 
 It was a reflection of Joseph de Maistre: "I 
 do not know what the heart of a rascal may be ; 
 I know what is in the heart of an honest man:
 
 76 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 it is horrible." Only a man is capable of making 
 this true reflection and of confessing not alone 
 faults which do not dishonour, but secrets which 
 are ridiculous and mortal sins which are without 
 extenuation. One may well believe that Chateau- 
 briand in his " Memoires d'Outre-tombe," La- 
 martine in his " Confidences," Renan in his " Sou- 
 venirs," even without being consciously insincere 
 or lacking iu veracity, refrained from mentioning 
 those cruelly painful reminiscences with which 
 Rousseau scourged himself ; but one is considered 
 simple-minded indeed who believes that George 
 Sand tells us as much as she can remember in 
 " L'Histoire de ma Vie." This charge which Mr. 
 Jules Lemaitre brings against George Sand finds 
 its explanation in the fact that women really do 
 forget. A man will deliberately revive the re- 
 membrance of past sins for his present amend- 
 ment, and evil being turned into good, the sin is 
 forgiven. A woman forgets an act of meanness 
 because it made no impression upon her mind 
 when she committed it. She does not understand 
 the nature of it. She forgives an act of meanness 
 which a woman commits against her because they 
 understand each other so well. 
 
 To arrive at an apprehension of this condi- 
 tion of non-morality, we must go back to the
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 77 
 
 beginning of created beings, wben the problems of 
 physiology were reduced to their simplest forms, 
 and the problems of psychology and ethics had 
 not yet made their appearance ; when the presence 
 of life was revealed only by the appearance of 
 movement. As we see the living being in its low- 
 est form, it merely moves, eats, grows, reproduces 
 itself, and dies. It is contractile, irritable, recep- 
 tive, assimilative, metabolic, secretory, respira- 
 tory, and reproductive, as the books on science 
 say. This seems a great deal, but in reality it is 
 very little, for it does not differentiate an amoeba 
 from a man. 
 
 The evolution of the animal kingdom began 
 with the acquirement of the first rudiments of 
 a morality. The original amoeba was content to 
 await until its food arrived in a faint swirl of 
 water. We can well imagine that, by some cir- 
 cumstance which was apparently fortuitous but in 
 reality due to the operation of the law of gravity 
 and of those principles which underlie the distri- 
 bution of air, the food was brought in unusual 
 quantity or at an unnecessary moment. The crea- 
 ture, being already surfeited, was quite willing 
 that the nutriment should go to a rival. The sat- 
 isfaction which was experienced as a result of 
 comfortable physical distention was attributed to
 
 78 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 an act of self-abnegation, and so the foundation 
 of morality was laid. 
 
 This illustration may be made more obvious, 
 and perhaps less absurd, if we consider the situa- 
 tion of the savage reclining before the fire with 
 his family in the sanctity of his cave after a suc- 
 cessful day's chase, and a surfeit upon the rude 
 but efficient cookery of those days. We shall not 
 be wrong if we surmise that an emotion of grati- 
 tude might arise in his breast towards the giver 
 of so much good and of commiseration of a less 
 fortunate neighbour. This laudable sentiment 
 might induce him to share the food which was yet 
 uneaten, especially if — not to credit him with 
 too high and disinterested a morality — he recalled 
 that on previous occasions his surplus store had 
 perished by decay. Certainly he would not feel 
 disposed to interfere with his neighbour's chase, 
 and so the principles of justice would be estab- 
 lished. It is not improbable that his neighbour at 
 some future time would do as he had been done 
 by, and accordingly the growth of morality and 
 the bonds of amity would be strengthened. In due 
 course game laws would make their appearance, 
 and out of that would arise a system of jurispru- 
 dence to cover the various problems which must 
 have faced a growing, though simple, civilization.
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 79 
 
 If now it be true that morality had its origin 
 in the mental and physical activities attendant 
 upon the procuring of food, and since these activi- 
 ties were exercised chiefly by the male, it fol- 
 lows that the female who was not brought under 
 the influence of a favourable environment would 
 remain non-moral. She did not come in contact 
 with the world, as the saying is, and continued 
 unlearned, wanting the hard lesson of experience. 
 Something of a similar nature is still witnessed 
 in the case of those clerics who deal habitually 
 with women, of schoolmasters and professors 
 whose world is merely that which is encountered 
 within the walls of a class-room, and of writers 
 whose observation does not extend beyond their 
 closets. The characteristics of the feminine nature 
 are found in them. They are considered virtuous 
 because the problems of morality have never pre- 
 sented themselves. 
 
 Shut out from the world, the primitive woman 
 was not free to develop an independent life. She 
 adapted herself to the man. His views were her 
 views ; his dislikes were shared by her, and she 
 adopted his opinions ready-made. She preferred 
 to be dependent, and agreed that the man should 
 continue to mould her mentality. This destruction 
 of her personality and departure from her line of
 
 80 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 life became so permanent that she enjoyed it. Her 
 sense of personal value was lost. It was found in 
 external things, her beauty, her adornment, her 
 children, or her husband. This lightness of regard 
 for their own personality still persists, as we may 
 see in the readiness with which a woman ex- 
 changes her own name for another, not once, but 
 under certain circumstances — after a period of 
 half-luxurious sorrow and self-conscious demure- 
 ness — twice, or yet again, and each time with 
 the greater alacrity. Without freedom there can 
 be no free will, and without free will there can be 
 no character. 
 
 The primitive man in the contest with his en- 
 vironment developed an ethic, a logic, and a mor- 
 ality, because he was free. Deprived of freedom, 
 the primitive woman remained servile in disposi- 
 tion ; tyrannical when occasion offered, because 
 the servant ever makes the worst master ; unjust, 
 since she was protected against the penalty of 
 injustice ; unsympathetic and heartless, because 
 there was no occasion for a wide and disinter- 
 ested charity ; mindless, because there was another 
 to think for her. Trained to accept the convention 
 which the man imposed upon her, she easily sub- 
 mitted to the conventions devised by her own sex, 
 and became imitative even in the clothes which
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 81 
 
 she wore, in the method of adornment which she 
 adopted, in the sentiments which she entertained, 
 and in the opinions which she expressed. In time, 
 however, she adapted herself to her environment, 
 and developed a kind of ethic of her own, which 
 was entirely adequate for the circumstances in 
 which she was placed, but breaks down hopelessly 
 in a wider sphere of activity. 
 
 As if it were not enough that the woman was 
 deprived of these incentives to the acquisition of 
 a morality, she was made the victim of man's un- 
 conscious egoism and his conscious duplicity. Men 
 in common with other males are subject at times 
 to a curious psychical and physical condition which 
 is familiarly known as "being in love. " The first 
 symptom of this mental disorder is an entire 
 incapacity to perceive the truth. He creates an 
 ideal woman, the woman of poetry and other ro- 
 mantical writings. He attributes to her, or rather 
 projects into the ideal, his own qualities of truth- 
 fulness, modesty, justice, charity, sympathy, for- 
 titude, and beauty. To employ the jargon of the 
 theologians, this ideal woman is anthropomorphic. 
 A man who is in love with a woman is really in 
 love with himself, but neither the one nor the 
 other is aware of the fact. He begins by deceiving 
 himself and ends by deceiving her, for a time at
 
 82 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 least, and her future life consists in the employ- 
 ment of every resource to encourage and main- 
 tain the fiction. It is not the real woman whom 
 he loves, but a spurious personality. To succeed 
 in retaining this love, she is obliged to live the 
 life of the image which he has created, and ends 
 by destroying her inner self. And yet, under 
 present conditions, that woman succeeds best who 
 is most successful in maintaining this illusion in 
 the minds of both. 
 
 This practice of loving and believing a lie is, I 
 suspect, the fb7is et origo of all that is evil in our 
 civilization. Few men and no women are free 
 from the vice. Even the intelligent fall into the 
 easy habit. In an important city the editing of a 
 newspaper was entrusted to ten of the most right- 
 eous women to be found therein, and yet they 
 assigned the prize which had been offered for the 
 best expression of appreciation of their labours 
 to a man who affirmed that their literary pro- 
 duct would overwhelm the city "with a deluge of 
 sweetness and light. " The second prize went to 
 a woman who predicted that much good would be 
 effected " by their wisdom, their wit, and their 
 might." 
 
 And this leads one to the observation that 
 nearly all writing is an endeavour to minister to
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 83 
 
 this desire for self-deception. Comparatively few 
 men who have attained to the great age of forty 
 years indulge in the pastime of reading. Their 
 experience has taught them that the motive of 
 nearly all writing is the desire for notoriety, 
 either in this life or in the minds of those who are 
 to come. They are wise enough to write their own 
 books ; but being wise, they abstain. They regard 
 it as a delusion that all who are capable of read- 
 ing are also capable of writing. As well might a 
 man believe that he had a peculiar aptitude for 
 herding sheep and playing the bagpipes, because 
 he was born in the Highlands of Scotland. This 
 desire of women to be deceived accounts for that 
 insincere writing which is found in nearly all 
 novels, and in all of those she-papers which fatten 
 upon their credulity. Reading, then, becomes a 
 vapid and frivolous amusement for dazing the 
 mind, and a book no better than a lap-dog. 
 
 Nor does art thrive any better than literature 
 in this atmosphere of feminism. Art has to do 
 with the beauty of utility, of truth. A woman 
 learns by instinct, possibly by experience, that 
 personal beauty does not imply morality, and as 
 it is with her own personality she is most con- 
 cerned, a secret distrust in all beauty, even the 
 beauty of art, is instilled into her mind. Accord-
 
 84 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 ingly the pictures which are painted to please 
 her must have a superficial prettiness, and the 
 houses which are erected for her use will best 
 serve her purpose if, instead of simplicity, they 
 display a decorated cosiness and have sufficient 
 cupboards for the accommodation of her cast-off 
 finery. 
 
 The superfluous top-hamper of civilization, 
 which makes living difficult for the rich and im- 
 possible for the poor, continues to burden human- 
 ity because women will have it so. A world of 
 iniquity is created out of their desire for change. 
 It is not love of beauty which suddenly reveals 
 to a woman that last year's adornment is hideous, 
 but the desire to change one form of ugliness for 
 another. If she possessed that sense of beauty 
 which comes from sincerity, and that in turn from 
 freedom, she would once and for all agree upon 
 some practice of adornment combined with util- 
 ity, which would have a reasonable degree of per- 
 manency, rather than submit to the tyranny of 
 an organized band of mercenaries, who exist for 
 the purpose of exploiting her femininity. This 
 passion in women for splendid apparel arises from 
 their suspicion that they are not in reality beau- 
 tiful, but have only been told so by men whose 
 senses they suspect are dulled by passion.
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 85 
 
 The value of the exercise of the suffrage by 
 a woman is that it will serve to emaucipate her 
 from herself in so far as it emancipates her 
 from men. In the present state of affairs, which 
 is based on the Oriental conception that a woman 
 is a chattel, a private possession, born to serve 
 and be dependent upon man, she has no complete 
 existence in herself. She obtains the sense of full 
 existence only through her husband and children, 
 just as the Mussulman woman attains to the 
 chief desire of her heart if she is chosen to give 
 a son to the Pattissah. She stands ready to be 
 made wife or mother, that she may acquire that 
 gift; and her love is the mental sense of satis- 
 faction that she is about to be redeemed. 
 
 Looked at narrowly, this attempt on the part 
 of women to emancipate themselves would appear 
 to be nothing more than the expression of a de- 
 sire to enlarge the range of their caprice, for 
 which not even marriage, the old and sovereign 
 remedy, is any longer efficacious. In reality the 
 reason lies much deeper. It is a blind striving 
 for the pure air of freedom, for escape from a 
 bondage in which only the qualities of the ser- 
 vile have had room for development. Until wo- 
 men cease to believe the pretty lies which men 
 tell them, that they are only a little lower than
 
 86 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 the angels, and discover the real bondage, their 
 own nature, from which they must emancipate 
 themselves, they will not proceed with any de- 
 gree of seriousness. They will not convince the 
 world until they themselves are convinced. Analy- 
 sis they consider detraction, and fly from inves- 
 tigation in wild alarm. Upon this subject there 
 is a considerable body of information in the 
 writings of satirists, dramatists, and theologians, 
 ancient and modern ; but it is decried as slander, 
 whether uttered by St. Paul, Origen, Clement 
 of Alexandria, or Otto Weininger. 
 
 This violent effort to attain to freedom is 
 bound to be associated with a form of disorderli- 
 ness which the common mind describes as hys- 
 terical. All disorder in itself is bad. It is intoler- 
 able only when it is meaningless. It is decried 
 because it is misunderstood. Any consideration 
 of the mind of the suffragette would be quite in- 
 adequate without some mention of those complex 
 manifestations which are known as hysteria. Of 
 this too I shall offer an explanation in support 
 of my argument. It is a sign of the striving 
 after a higher morality, of an attempt to " convert 
 nothing into something," to put on a new nature, 
 to acquire personality, distinction, character, and 
 mind. Up to a certain point the woman accepts
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 87 
 
 her femininity and all that is implied thereby with 
 unquestioning obedience, taking it at its mascu- 
 line value. In the absence of an external con- 
 trolling influence there comes a divine discon- 
 tent with that negative condition of existence, 
 and she becomes imbued with moral ideas which 
 are foreign to her normal mind and opposed to 
 her real nature. In reality she puts on a super- 
 ficial, sham self, and yet is incapable of perceiving 
 the spuriousness of it. This new personality shows 
 itself in self-confidence, independence, assertive- 
 ness, a punctilious sincerity, and painful candour 
 in speech and action. This artificial imitation 
 of the masculine morality with which she has over- 
 laid her femininity, at the touch of some rough 
 reality flies in pieces, and the conflict between 
 her real nature and this unnatural self produces 
 those phenomena which are known as hysteria. 
 It is a contest between what she knows to be true 
 and what she suspects is false. 
 
 A woman in this condition is a piteous and de- 
 grading spectacle, exposing her femininity naked 
 yet unashamed, and revealing the whole record 
 of development in its continuous progress through 
 those stages which we designate as plant, beast, 
 and savage life. To the psychologist the phenom- 
 enon is full of interest and fruitful of instruction,
 
 88 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 but it recalls the fearful image conjured up by 
 the words : 
 
 ** And Satan yawning on his brazen seat, 
 
 Toys with the screaming thing his fiends have flayed." 
 
 This demand for the suffrage is in reality an 
 attempt to arrive at a higher morality, to attain 
 to consideration in virtue of goodness and not of 
 charm. The real opponents are the women who 
 master men by that easy device, and all men who 
 find it so comfortable to succumb, because they 
 find it so alluring. There is an active and a pas- 
 sive conspiracy working to the same end that 
 women shall not be free. There is no creature in 
 the world who is so irritating to the woman who 
 is merely good as the woman who is merely charm- 
 ing, and therefore in a condition of negative mor- 
 ality. The most efficient means to destroy the force 
 of any charm is to investigate its origin, a task to 
 which those who are striving for emancipation 
 would do well to apply themselves. It is not 
 enough that they have relinquished this quality 
 in themselves. They can succeed only when they 
 have removed its possession from others. 
 
 The struggle for freedom from their own na- 
 ture will not be easy. The habits acquired during 
 countless ages are all but ineradicable ; yet pro-
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 89 
 
 gress may appear in the exchange of one bondage 
 for another. One would say that the noble army 
 of martyrs who have attacked the inner sanctu- 
 ary of the British Constitution had emancipated 
 themselves from every restraint and destroyed 
 the last attraction between themselves and living 
 men ; and yet their next act was to bind them- 
 selves with physical chains to those stone images 
 of male humanity which stand in the Hall of St. 
 Stephen. This thing is an allegory. 
 
 I am not blind to certain perils which lie in 
 the way ; but I think they have been exaggerated 
 and will tend to cure themselves. Voting implies 
 being voted for, and men are so fatuous that they 
 will vote for the woman who has a pleasing per- 
 sonality and skill in the adornment of her person, 
 rather than for a candidate of commanding intel- 
 lect and skill in the public use of her tongue. 
 Then will arise another noble band of martyrs 
 after the discovery of how little men's votes for 
 women are influenced by reason and how much by 
 charm. They will declare that men shall no longer 
 have the opportunity of being silly, and they will 
 banish their charming sisters from public life. 
 
 There is nothing which a man who is left to 
 himself desires so ardently as he desires the femi- 
 nine. To attain to it he will commit the last in-
 
 90 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 famy, descending to the level of the beast from 
 which he has arisen, even whilst he despises him- 
 seK for the surrender of that morality which he 
 has so laboriously acquired. This interdependence 
 of good and evil constitutes the riddle of the uni- 
 verse ; and yet it is out of this conflict between 
 the lower and the higher that our civilization, 
 as we know it, has arisen. The woman exercises 
 her power by means of a charm, by which she 
 allures and then captivates. The " fountain " of 
 this charm is love, and its essence " pleasant to 
 the eyes " like that fruit which first attracted the 
 Universal Dame herself. 
 
 If the power of this charm were unchecked, it 
 would re-absorb the masculine idea into the femi- 
 nine, so earnestly is it desired by men. It is the 
 business of women to see to it that this charm is 
 exercised with due restraint. Every child knows 
 that a charm is broken by speech, and if the in- 
 junction taceat mulier were observed, the mascu- 
 line would be delivered into an eternal bondage. 
 If all women at all times behaved themselves in 
 accordance with the principles of the eternal femi- 
 nine, which are those of appearance and beauty, 
 men would become so enamoured of it that they 
 would mould their lives by it and eventually trans- 
 form themselves into women.
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 91 
 
 Compare the power of the woman who sits, and 
 looks, and exercises her charm in silence and mys- 
 tery with her who says an inane thing three times 
 over with the intention of being interesting and 
 vivacious, or a foolish thing rather than remain 
 silent; with her who votes and speaks in the coun- 
 cils, even though she speak with the tongue of a 
 man and reveal all knowledge; with her who 
 brawls in public places, and even gives her body 
 to the HoUoway gaol, and we shall discover the 
 essential reason why women should be encouraged 
 to do these things, namely, that they shall be 
 induced to tell the truth about themselves and so 
 liberate men in some degree from the power of 
 their charm, that reason may govern life. 
 
 The women who are not satisfied with the status 
 of wife and mother and are striving to educate 
 themselves into fitting "companions" for their 
 husbands and sons by attending lectures and read- 
 ing magazines are unaware of the power of this 
 charm, and are suffering from an exaggerated 
 notion of the kind of companionship for which 
 men are capable. They magnify the masculine in- 
 telligence unduly. What a piece of work is a man ! 
 they exclaim in rhapsody, how noble in reason, 
 how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how 
 express and admirable, in action how like an
 
 92 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 angel, in apprehension how like a god, the beauty 
 of the world! In reality this "paragon of ani- 
 mals " desires a woman more ardently than he 
 desires a talking book, agreeing, if he is sensi- 
 ble, with that eminent divine, John Calvin, when 
 he declared, " The only beauty that can please my 
 heart is one that is gentle, chaste, modest, eco- 
 nomical, patient, and finally, careful of her hus- 
 band's health." 
 
 The real grievance from which women suffer is 
 that their authority and claim to consideration is 
 based upon a principle which is non-ethical and 
 of no inherent value in their eyes. Their way of 
 escape lies in convincing men that they also should 
 arrive at a like estimate of its fallibility. This can 
 best be done by setting up truth in opposition to 
 falsehood, which is the most subtle method of 
 iconoclasm, the most powerful for breaking down 
 an eidolon in which the affections are inordinately 
 fixed, since the deity and the devotee can then 
 make mutual inferences. To keep the matter 
 scientific and impersonal, they might begin by an 
 investigation into the nature of the troglodytic 
 woman, disclosing her characteristics, assigning 
 them to their proper cause, and estimating what 
 proportion still remains. The opinion requires cor- 
 roboration that women have been more successful
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 93 
 
 than men in purging away those qualities which 
 were inherent in the primitive nature. Indeed to 
 the most careful observer there is some evidence 
 that jealousy has not entirely given way to justice, 
 heartlessness to charity, pride to dignity, shame- 
 lessness to modesty, selfishness to sympathy, and 
 the desire of provoking compassion to a self- 
 reliant fortitude. 
 
 This investigation might properly be under- 
 taken by the various Councils of Women, even at 
 the risk of excluding those subjects upon which 
 they possess no especial information, such as the 
 effect of narcotics and intoxicants upon the mas- 
 culine frame. A frank pronouncement from this 
 high quarter would be free from the taunt that it 
 was merely slander, diatribe, or vituperation. To 
 make the enquiry sufficiently extensive, it might 
 be well to appoint a committee of men to prepare 
 an agendum for the meeting, a labour in which I 
 would willingly bear a part, having a desire for 
 specific information upon certain points, namely : 
 why up to a certain age a younger sister dislikes 
 the elder, and between certain ages a mother is 
 averse to her daughter ; why the law of modesty 
 in apparel is not constant at nine o'clock in the 
 evening and nine o'clock in the morning ; why it is 
 painful for a woman to witness another advancing
 
 94 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 in social status ; why female beauty and an adorn- 
 ment which heightens it does not excite an emo- 
 tion of universal pleasure ; why women make good 
 nurses, if it is not because they are lacking in 
 sympathy. 
 
 For women, then, there are two lines of con- 
 duct open, and only two. Either they must re- 
 main within the cave, as " sisters to the flowers," 
 in an environment suitable for the development 
 of such qualities as may be developed from the es- 
 sentially feminine nature, an easy docility, a pleas- 
 urable obedience, meekness, forbearance, long-suf- 
 fering, patience, silence; as objects upon which 
 men may lavish protection, kindness, benevolence, 
 affection, and so stimulate their own masculine 
 morality, and redeem themselves in virtue of the 
 love which is created thereby : or they must as- 
 pire to a perfect freedom; casting aside the curb 
 of sex and freeing themselves from the tyranny of 
 kith and kin, they must come out into the world 
 and remain out in the full glare of the sun, ruth- 
 lessly exposing their nature to the rough environ- 
 ment whereby its imperfections will be scourged 
 and chastened away. Possibly that nature might 
 perish in the process before a new one was created, 
 and in any event it might be nothing more than a 
 close approximation to the male.
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 95 
 
 There is no middle station, half in and half out, 
 exposing the evil and doing nothing for its amend- 
 ment. This tentative standing-ground merely per- 
 mits of a sudden release of the nature of the primi- 
 tive woman in all its nakedness unchecked from 
 within and uncontrolled from without. The spec- 
 tacle is so revolting, I fear, that most women would 
 turn back with grief and hatred of it to their old 
 rule, rather than strive with a full purpose and 
 endeavour after a new obedience. That is the es- 
 sential difficulty with which those women have to 
 contend, who would lead their sisters out of bond- 
 age. Their real enemies are of their own house- 
 hold, who hate to see this revelation that women 
 make of themselves, which affords to vulgar satir- 
 ists congenial exercise of their irony and scoff, for 
 the torment or amusement of those who, like them- 
 selves, by continually regarding humanity as it is, 
 have developed a capacity for analysis at the ex- 
 pense of a certain dryness and hardness of heart. 
 
 These satirists smile and whisper in our ear 
 that the emancipation of women is intended only 
 to enlarge the bounds of their caprice ; that their 
 performance is of no immediate interest to the 
 man, and only of very remote benefit to the 
 woman ; that, when he grows tired of the farce, 
 he will cast her out of the cave and leave her to
 
 96 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 her own device as he was left in the day of his 
 creation. From this they conclude that a race 
 which allows itself to be brought to such an im- 
 passe is not worth reproducing, and we cannot 
 blame them too severely. It is on account of their 
 perception of this fact that the women of primi- 
 tive communities deal faithfully with their unruly 
 sisters lest a worse thing befall themselves. There 
 is a choice between the good and the best as there 
 is between the evil and the good; and women must 
 find in freedom compensation for having cast out 
 the imputed sacredness from their lives ; and, in 
 watching the gyrations of their souls, some re- 
 compense for that calm leisure in which they were 
 wont to dream. 
 
 This then is the end of the argument in favour 
 of the suffragette, which is developed out of her 
 own psychology. Women have obtained their 
 places in the world because they are desired by 
 men on grounds which are not of the highest ethi- 
 cal quality ; but these are the only grounds upon 
 which men will consent to endure the burden of 
 carrying on a society, about whose invention they 
 were not consulted. We are now — men and 
 women, not as opponents but as companions in a 
 misery which we should do our best to assuage by 
 mutual help — face to face with the real problem :
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 97 
 
 Shall we allow the evil to endure, or even suffer 
 the good to remain as the enemy of the best, say- 
 ing with the sluggard, a little more sleep, a little 
 more slumber; or shall we strive after the higher 
 morality, even losing our life that we may save it ? 
 It is no bar to the argument that it faces the 
 extinction of the species to which we belong. In 
 a question of morality consequences do not count. 
 "We did not create ourselves. The responsibility 
 of ceasing to exist does not rest upon us. It is in 
 reality a question of conduct, and upon that we 
 can always get information if we enquire of Him 
 whose genius for right living was such that a large 
 proportion of mankind have agreed upon Him as 
 the chief exemplar and pattern of pure righteous- 
 ness. The problem presented itself to Him. He 
 answered it in specific terms. Three times and in 
 separate places are the question and answer re- 
 corded in words which are almost identical : What 
 good thing shall I do that I may inherit eternal 
 life; what lack I yet ? What shall I do that I may 
 inherit eternal life ? What shall I do to inherit 
 eternal life? To convince us that the answer is 
 not one of special application, the question is re- 
 peated thrice in general terms and so recorded : 
 Who then can be saved? Who then can be saved ? 
 Who then can be saved ? The answer invariably
 
 98 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 is that those who would inherit everlasting life 
 must first forsake certain things which are spe- 
 cifically set forth, and the enumeration ends in 
 all cases with " woman." One is quite prepared 
 to be told that Paul was ill-informed or ill-na- 
 tured, when he declared that even the intimacy 
 with a woman which is implied by marriage is a 
 drag in the attempt after a higher life, and yet 
 protest, in face of that exegetic feat which attrib- 
 utes the insertion of the fatal word to a monkish 
 hand, that Jesus really meant something when he 
 said that she must be forsaken. 
 
 All things are working toward this divine end 
 by making it easy to forsake the woman. As that 
 kind of intelligence is developed by higher educa- 
 tion, as it is called with a certain degree of as- 
 sumption, which consists in an increased capacity 
 for the recollection of unrelated statements, a 
 measure of value is created which men can under- 
 stand. They are dealing in their own currency. 
 Pedantry they have already witnessed, and the 
 instructed woman is even less adorable than a 
 professor. An imitation of the garb which is cus- 
 tomary in the male at once suggests the form 
 which it is intended to conceal and a comparison 
 with the standards of abstract beauty. "When 
 women place themselves in situations for which
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE 99 
 
 they are not qualified by their nature to fill with 
 obvious advantage they become a ridiculous cari- 
 cature of themselves. The mind of the suffragette 
 appears to possess a peculiar aptitude for that ab- 
 surdity which makes a man impatient and finally 
 contemptuous of all femininity, and resolute to 
 adhere to his own ideal. A woman may be foolish 
 and yet be charming. She emancipates herself 
 when she becomes an object of aversion.
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 
 
 I 
 
 Contrary to the practice of the best essayists, 
 which is to begin as far away from their subject 
 as possible and come near it only occasionally, 
 I shall at once set forth in plain terms what I 
 conceive to be the fallacy in education : that the 
 information which a child acquires must have 
 in itself some utility apart from the educational 
 value which lies in its acquirement. A complete 
 exposition of this fallacy would involve a studious 
 enquiry into the essential nature and purpose of 
 education, a laborious research of the methods 
 which are now in favour, and possibly some com- 
 ment upon the conduct of the persons who are 
 engaged in educational work. 
 
 By way of prelude to introduce these various 
 themes, it may be remarked that this controversy 
 in which I propose to engage myself is not pre- 
 cisely new, and I do not expect to bring to it any 
 sudden accession of wisdom, but rather to make 
 a conjecture at the likelihood of the thing, not 
 either as one uttering an oracle or delivering a 
 dogma, but with a full apprehension of the falli- 
 bility of all human sayings.
 
 104 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 Let us begin with the assumption that our 
 theory of education is fallacious. Consequently a 
 system which is based upon a false principle must 
 itself be wrong. This is the proper frame of mind 
 for the conduct of any research. It is in accord 
 with reason and experience ; and the assumption 
 is not a violent one. We have been wrong in our 
 theories about God : possibly we are not even yet 
 correctly and adequately informed upon that large 
 matter. Our knowledge of the meaning of the 
 world which we have seen has turned out, when it 
 was put to the test, to be as irrational as our 
 theology ; and upon this less abstruse subject — 
 comparatively, that is — there is yet a divergence 
 of opinion. 
 
 Up to a time within the memory of men now 
 living the theory of education was that the process 
 had something to do with education. This gen- 
 eral statement may be allowed to stand, although 
 it merits scrutiny. It has been attacked by those 
 who, in ignorance of the essential nature of edu- 
 cation and under the delusion that going to 
 school or the acquirement of unrelated fragments 
 of knowledge constitutes its effect, profess to 
 find in it a brutalizing effect upon the mind. 
 This judgement is too sweeping, although it does 
 in a way enforce the truth that the education
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 105 
 
 which is of most value is that which a man gives 
 to himself. It takes note of the Socratic fallacy 
 that a man of knowledge and even of correct 
 opinions will be of necessity a good man. It has 
 an eye too upon what George Gissing calls the in- 
 telligence of the heart, that quality which saves 
 a man from folly. Happily we, as well as he, 
 have seen men and women, ignorant, prejudiced, 
 capable of the absurdest misreasoning ; and yet 
 their faces shone with the virtues of kindness, 
 sweetness, generosity, and modesty. 
 
 In that division of literature which pretends 
 to give an account of the operation of the Divine 
 Spirit in the human soul, a clear distinction is 
 drawn between the significance of an act and a 
 work. The matter is very abstruse, but it and 
 our subject may both be illustrated by saying 
 that education is not an act nor a series of acts, 
 but a work of slow accomplishment, which ends 
 in leaving a man different, and better than he 
 was before. An illustration is not proof, and we 
 can go no further until we shall have determined 
 what the end and aim of education really is, 
 whether, in short, it is the achievement of mental 
 activity or the upbuilding of character. 
 
 AVise men have applied their minds to this 
 subject from the earliest times, and their maxims
 
 106 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 were already " obsolete and stale " when Adicaeolo- 
 gos discoursed with Socrates. And since, as Plato 
 says, possibly in his own defence, it is altogether 
 probable that wise men do not talk nonsense, it 
 may be well to set forth their opinion, and taking 
 nothing as proven, bring it to the test of reason- 
 ableness. All education, Plato himself declares, 
 consists in effecting a change from a worse to a 
 better state of mind, and him he considers edu- 
 cated, who converts what appears and is evil into 
 what is and appears good. In similar words Mil- 
 ton affirms that the end of learning is to repair 
 the ruins of our first parents' fall by regaining to 
 know God aright, and out of that knowledge to 
 love Him, to imitate Him, to be like Him. After 
 the manner of Montaigne we might cite his own 
 authority upon the institution and education of 
 a child, " that aimeth at true learning and in 
 which would be disciplined not so much for gain 
 nor for external show and ornament but to adorn 
 and enrich his inward mind, desiring rather to 
 shape and institute an able and sufficient man." 
 
 From another source we may obtain a curious 
 confirmation of these high views. J.-J. Rous- 
 seau, after he had abandoned his five children, 
 felt qualified to write a treatise upon education. 
 Mr. Jules Lemaitre, as the result of a judicious
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 107 
 
 enquiry, has delivered judgement that " lies are 
 the very soul of three-fourths of all his books." 
 To say that a man lies is to admit that some- 
 times he speaks the truth ; therefore, we may 
 with the greater confidence give attention to what 
 Rousseau says in the remaining fourth of his 
 writings. The object of education, he declares, is 
 to prolong the period of a boy's ignorance : it is 
 not to form a man destined for any given profes- 
 sion, but a man, — healthy, strong, frank, loyal. 
 This view of the high aim of education has 
 always been set forth in opposition to the lower 
 aim at the useful and the practical. A meeting of 
 school trustees in any district to-day will give 
 back as an echo the words of the Greek chorus : 
 "This lower learning is an invention worth a 
 thousand pounds to those who practise it." This 
 confusion between learning and education, this 
 mistake of the wrappings for the kernel, is well 
 set forth in the history of that poor man, as re- 
 lated by Aristophanes, who mistook the fish-hook 
 for the fish. It was apparent to Plato when he 
 declared that he had seen in the Courts men 
 keen, and shrewd, and skilled in the use of words, 
 with dwarfed and grovelling souls, deprived of 
 mental enlargement, uprightness, and independ- 
 ence. The phenomenon cannot be unusual, since
 
 108 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 Milton witnessed it in his own country at a much 
 later period: "Men allured to the trade of law, 
 who ground their purposes not on the prudent 
 and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, 
 but on the promising and pleasing thoughts of 
 litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees." 
 
 I am quite well aware that the standard of edu- 
 cation cannot be fixed by authority, no matter 
 how weighty it may be. We may not without 
 fresh examination accept the judgement of the 
 wisest men of the olden time. Their view is 
 brought forward by way of contrast merely be- 
 cause it is definite and does possess an obvious 
 likeness to the probability of truth. We have 
 made so many contributions to knowledge that 
 we shall not be dominated even by the mind of 
 Plato, especially at a moment when we are about 
 to add the mastery of the air to our mastery of 
 the earth and the waters which cover it. 
 
 The contribution which we have made to the sci- 
 ence of education amounts to this : that the study 
 of the classics is useless, and that study alone is 
 valuable which has something to do with science. 
 As a result the issue is not now between classical 
 education and scientific education, but between 
 any education whatever and no education at all. 
 In reality there never was any real contest be-
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 109 
 
 tween science and classics, because all education 
 is one. Science merely aims at establishing the 
 orderly continuity and development of created 
 things, and classics the continuity of the intellect 
 and of the emotions ; it becomes thereby a part 
 of science in itself. Previous to Mr. Huxley's 
 time science was considered, in English-speaking 
 communities at least, to have only to do with a 
 backward and forward, instead of a rotary, move- 
 ment of the fists for purposes of self-defence; 
 and it is not remarkable if he showed little piety 
 towards the method by which the persons who 
 held that absurd motion had been educated. 
 
 The opinion still persists, however, that there 
 are two kinds of education, and that choice should 
 be made between them according to the result 
 which is desired. These are in the main two : that 
 the boy shall be educated ; and that he shall be 
 efficient in the calling which he is to follow. 
 Roughly speaking, a classical education was an 
 attempt to realize the one ; the modern system is 
 a frank attempt to arrive at the other. Up to our 
 own time England was the exponent of a classi- 
 cal education, and we must admit that in some 
 way, whether by reason of or in spite of it. Eng- 
 lishmen were the best educated men in the world. 
 They acquired a tincture of learning, a sense of
 
 no ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 fairness and of duty, a contempt of low conduct. 
 They feared God, honoured the king, and loved 
 their country. They had character. But in time 
 the discovery was made that, in spite of this char- 
 acter or by reason of it, they did not get on in 
 the world as well as those who had a different 
 education or none at all. The Germans were 
 beating: them in some fields : the Americans in 
 others. 
 
 The educational authorities in the United States 
 were the first to introduce the new learning into 
 their schools. Dazzled by the achievements of sci- 
 ence in producing electric light, telephones, and 
 buildings which scrape the sky, they were unable 
 to estimate the value of these performances to 
 humanity. They assumed that it must be immense 
 and a scientific education was the thing. Boys of 
 tender years were set to work forthwith with 
 test-tubes. They dissected plants. They looked 
 through lenses, and were told what to see. Rather, 
 tbey spent their time over books on chemistry, 
 botany, and biology; deluding themselves into 
 the belief that they were becoming educated by 
 acquiring into their memories a number of unre- 
 lated statements. 
 
 It must be admitted that the people of the 
 United States have acquired a certain prestige in
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 111 
 
 business. This success has been attributed to a 
 system of education which made them smart, 
 whilst in reality it was due to the abundance 
 of their natural resources, the ease with which 
 those resources were exploited, and their absolute 
 freedom of trade over a territory and with a pop- 
 ulation of such an extent as the world has never 
 seen. From a somewhat careful study of the bio- 
 graphies of American " Captains of Industry " 
 one gathers that the factor which is common to 
 all of them is the meagreness of their scholastic 
 career by any method whatever. 
 
 There is a body of evidence of a material char- 
 acter which goes to show that this system of train- 
 ing has ended by leaving the boy uneducated 
 whilst it has not given him any knowledge of sci- 
 ence ; and it is to the United States that we must 
 look for its logical and complete development. In 
 their public schools there are 16,596,503 boys 
 and girls at a yearly charge of $376,996,472. 
 This calculation makes no allowance for the value 
 of these young persons' time, which is of some 
 value in communities where attendance upon 
 school is considered only a part and not the whole 
 of life. From this body of students extending over 
 every State in the Union, and embracing mem- 
 bers not of the more stupid classes alone, a cer-
 
 112 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 tain number are drawn for examination for en- 
 trance into the Military Academy at West Point. 
 This selection is above the average and includes 
 only those who have passed through all grades in 
 the public schools. 
 
 Indeed last year, of 314 boys who were exam- 
 ined, 295, or 90 per cent, were educated in public 
 schools, and the average number of years of at- 
 tendance in these schools was 9 years, 11 months. 
 Separating this into primary and secondary at- 
 tendance, the average attendance in high schools 
 was 3 years, 3 months ; and in grammar schools, 
 6 years, 8 mouths. Of these, 103 had private tu- 
 toring, wholly or in part ; 135 had a college edu- 
 cation of one year or more, and 189 had studied 
 the classics. Out of 314 who took the examination, 
 265, or 84 per cent, failed in one or more sub- 
 jects ; 209, or 66 per cent, failed in two or more 
 subjects ; while 26, or eight per cent, failed in all. 
 Of the 135 who enjoyed at least one year's in- 
 struction in a college, 82 failed to pass. The sub- 
 jects of examination were those which are usually 
 chosen for entrance to a University: elementary 
 algebra ; plane geometry ; English grammar ; lit- 
 erature and composition ; history ; and geography. 
 It will be observed that no mention is made of 
 Latin or Greek. Colonel Larned, who is in charge
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 113 
 
 of the Military Academy, has done a service to 
 the cause of common-sense by exposing these re- 
 sults, as he has done, in the " North American 
 Review." 
 
 A possible inference from these returns is that 
 the boys were trained in athletics and had acquired 
 a manly vigour, if no great profundity of scholar- 
 ship. But Colonel Lamed dispels this illusion also, 
 when he informs us that of these 314 selected pu- 
 pils, 82 were rejected on physical examination and 
 18 were placed upon probation, making a total of 
 100, or 30 per cent. As an illustration of what a 
 prolonged period of this education will do for a 
 boy's mind, Colonel Lamed cites the case of a 
 pupil from New Jersey, who had been ten years 
 in a grammar school and five months at " a tech- 
 nological high school." He made in algebra 33 
 per cent ; in geometry 15 ; in grammar 36 ; in 
 composition and literature 46 ; in geography 52 ; 
 in history 52 per cent. He was under the impres- 
 sion that the Seine is in Northern Russia and the 
 Ebro in Western France. He writes "orbet," 
 " gess," "orther," " cival," "barbarious," " cural." 
 He conceives of Rome as embracing " all Italy the 
 Holy Land or Jerusalem " ; and of Feudalism as 
 " one family making war on another in their 
 castles " ; of the Wars of the Roses as " between
 
 114 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 Cromwell and the King " ; and of the Reforma- 
 tion as the changing by the people from "the 
 evile ways to a more christian way of living." He 
 reprobates the Inquisition as " barbarious meth- 
 ods resorted to in order to try and convert a per- 
 son's religion. These methods were very cural." 
 As to the causes of the war for the Union, he 
 judges that " slavery was the main aggitation ; so 
 Carolina done most of the disputing and finely 
 ceceeded." His grammar is no less original in 
 conception : " If is an infinitive. It gives ground 
 to make the sentence possible, and if removed 
 causes to become inoperative," — which reminds 
 one of much other American writing, especially 
 in the domain of medicine. 
 
 From another source we get confirmation of 
 this evidence, which shows that with a more 
 purely scientific training the results are not much 
 better. Mr. Hornwill, in that important publica- 
 tion, "The Scientific American," offers as illus- 
 trations some examples drawn from answers to 
 examination papers : " The equator is a menagerie 
 Hon running round the earth. The earth's climate 
 is the hottest next the creator. Sound effects the 
 oratory nerves. The blood is putrified in the lungs 
 by inspired air. The axis of the earth is an im- 
 aginary line on which the earth is supposed to
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 115 
 
 take its daily routine. Food passes through the 
 elementary canal. One of the brightest stars is 
 called the Juniper. A watershed is a place where 
 there is water and rocks overhead that form a shed. 
 A watershed is a house between two rivers, so 
 that a drop of water falling on one side of a roof 
 runs into one river and a drop on the other side 
 goes into the other river. A parallel straight line 
 is one which, when produced to meet itself, does 
 not meet. Parallel straight lines, even if produced 
 to all eternity, can not expect to meet each other. 
 Air usually has no weight, but when placed in a 
 barometer it is found to weigh about fifteen pounds 
 to a square inch. If a small hole were bored in 
 the top of a barometer tube, the mercury would 
 shoot up in a column thirty feet high. Things 
 which are equal to each other are equal to any- 
 thing else. Gravity is chiefly noticeable in the 
 autumn when the apples are falling from the 
 trees. Mushrooms always grown in damp places 
 and so they look like umbrellas. The probable 
 cause of earthquakes may be attributed to bad 
 drainage and neglect of sewage. A steamer cut 
 or part the water aside ; but with a sailing vessel 
 it is not the case, for it sail up and down on the 
 waves and billows. Electricity and lightning are 
 of the same nature, the only difference being that
 
 116 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 lightning is often several miles in length, while 
 electricity is only a few inches." 
 
 President Pritchett of the Carnegie Foundation 
 Fund for the Advancement of Teaching in his 
 annual report informs us that, of the students 
 entering Harvard last year, 58 per cent failed to 
 meet all requirements. In Yale the ratio was 57 
 per hundred. In Columbia 75 out of 145 entrants 
 were "conditioned " ; and in New York University 
 the numbers were 36 out of 41. 
 
 The main result of the English method was 
 that boys with minds which were capable of im- 
 provement were educated and became leaders of 
 men. The boys without such minds were rele- 
 gated to their own place without loss of time to 
 their teachers or waste of their own. The aim of 
 the American method is to bring the whole -mass 
 up to the same level, with the result that there are 
 few leaders and many ill-educated. This princi- 
 ple finds its ultimate expression in those schools 
 which are designed for the instruction of the im- 
 becile, and the re-education, as it is called, of 
 those who have lost their reason by accident or 
 disease. 
 
 The advocates of the classical method would 
 do well to fix their minds upon the essential util- 
 ity of the thing, and not upon any fanciful utili-
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 117 
 
 tarian value which it may possess. Even Milton 
 fell into this fallacy when he advised that boys 
 should read such bucolic writers as Cato, Varro, 
 and the rural parts of Virgil and Ovid, so that 
 they might be incited to improve the tillage of 
 their country. From this it was an easy descent 
 to the institutions of physic, so that they might 
 learn " how to manage a crudity. " There is 
 danger also in the newest theory that Latin shall 
 be learned in order that one may know how to 
 write English. This will do very well for those 
 who cannot write and must learn how ; and yet 
 a travelling tinker lodged in a wayside gaol, a 
 nicely brought up young lady, or a well-trained 
 housemaid, who have been accustomed from their 
 youth up to good models, will speak and write 
 better English than one may expect to find 
 amongst the undergraduates in the classical de- 
 partment of an American University. 
 
 I do not think that the account which is com- 
 monly given of the value of a classical education 
 is the correct one. It is alleged that it trains the 
 boy to think, to reason, to arrive at exact conclu- 
 sions, and to entertain correct opinions. I think 
 that the value of a classical education lies in the 
 fact that the pupil passes his time without de- 
 bauching his mind with facts which for him are
 
 118 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 only half truths because they are ill-compre- 
 hended. He is not tempted by the fancied utility 
 of the thing which he is learning to " swallow his 
 philosophy by mouthfuls," to take short cuts, to 
 take refuge in words. The boy who has a mind 
 can learn classics: the boy who has no mind 
 cannot, and he is not persuaded that he knows 
 a thing when he does not know it. The words 
 of the dialogue in " The Clouds " apply to 
 him : 
 
 ^^Pheidip. What can I learn or profit from such 
 
 teachers ? 
 Streps. But first and foremost thou canst learn to 
 know 
 Thyself, how totally unlearn'd thou art ; 
 How mere a blockhead and how dull of brain." 
 
 He does not hear that fatal call to the uninspired, 
 of which Mr. Benson speaks, nor does he enter 
 in at that door which the modern method opens to 
 the incompetent. 
 
 The boy who spends ten years in a classical 
 school has upon the surface some fifty thousand 
 lines of Latin and some Greek to show for it. 
 Their meaning is lost upon him. It will not occur 
 to him that these languages were ever employed 
 by living men for the expression of hate, cupidity, 
 or love. His authors are hard or easy, their writ-
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 119 
 
 inofs a mere contexture of words. If he is insensi- 
 ble to the sardonic laughter and mordant ridicule 
 of Juvenal; the cold irony, the biting satire, and 
 pitiless scorn of Tacitus ; the airy grace of Lucian ; 
 the wide humanity of Cicero ; the urbanity of 
 Horace ; the histrionic display which Caesar 
 makes, or the flexibility which Livius lends to 
 his vocabulary ; he is also insensible to the lubri- 
 city of Catullus, the licentious fancy of Ovid, and 
 to the facile sycophancy, the gross literalness, the 
 brilliant prurience, and unabashed mendicancy of 
 Martial. If one can imagine a young Japanese 
 reading a few chapters of Justin McCarthy's vol- 
 umes or a play by Mr. G. B. Shaw, in ignorance 
 of the fact that these great writers were Irishmen, 
 he will gain some notion of the degree of intelli- 
 gence which the average school-boy brings to 
 bear upon his classics. Both are dead to the sub- 
 stance and dead to the form. For such purposes 
 as it is alleged are served by a reading of these 
 ancient writers, the plays of Shakespeare would 
 do quite as well. But the real purpose would be 
 missed, — a detachment of mind, the pure, ingenu- 
 ous simplicity and peace of boyhood, a lack of 
 curiosity, a calmness of intellect, a quietness of 
 emotion, which permits of a healthful growth. In 
 the very uselessness of his tasks and in the drilling
 
 120 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 and drudgery which their mastery demands is to 
 the boy their highest value as a disciplinary 
 measure. It is in this that education consists. 
 
 Another advantage of this hard and fast cur- 
 riculum, as Professor Macnaughton insists, was 
 that in due season it stimulated a curiosity about 
 those things which lay outside. Latin and Greek 
 were so difficult that the boy was driven for relief 
 to English writers, who then had all the relish of 
 stolen waters or bread eaten in secret, — a liter- 
 ary food which boys now disdain because there 
 is danger of being examined about the nature 
 of it. 
 
 A remarkably intelligent woman defended the 
 English public schools by appealing to their suc- 
 cess in producing governors. This comment is 
 not nearly so absurd as it seems, although, as 
 Dean Walton remarked, the proportion of such 
 persons must be extremely small. The boy was 
 taught no formulae, and he went to his appointed 
 task with an open mind, trusting to his own in- 
 stincts and the genius of his race. The best in- 
 structed communities govern themselves worst, 
 because they are so wise that they create a theory 
 of government instead of abiding by experience. 
 Kansas is the least illiterate State in the Union and 
 it has the worst lejrislation. Each man is so wise
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 121 
 
 that lie wishes to govern everyone else, and he is 
 not wise enough to perceive that the foolishness of 
 all the people is more valuable than the wisdom 
 of any individual. The English boy of eighteen 
 who has spent ten years at classics is as ignorant 
 of classics as the American boy who has spent an 
 equal length of time at science is ignorant of sci- 
 ence. The one, however, is consciously ignorant ; 
 the other is unconscious that his knowledge is so 
 incomplete that it amounts to misinformation. 
 
 This governor in 2wsse had suspected from his 
 classical studies, slight though they were, that 
 there were people in the world before his time, 
 and that their civilization was different from his 
 own. He had possibly read in the " Antigone " of 
 Sophocles that the Greeks held it as a horrible 
 thing that a dead body should remain unburied. 
 Consequently he would acquire a toleration of other 
 ideas which to him were equally absurd, and a 
 sympathy with the peoples who held them. By 
 this flexibility of imagination he could enter into 
 the mind of the Hindoo and discover that it has 
 much in common with the Greek ; he would com- 
 prehend strange religions, and appreciate the sig- 
 nificance of practices which were alien to his 
 own experience. That is the first lesson which an 
 Imperial people has to learn.
 
 122 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 I am far from pretending that there is a magi- 
 cal efficacy in the classics, apart from the environ- 
 ment of masters and scholars, and the tradition 
 of the schools in which they are taught, or that 
 ignorance of science, history, and geogi'aphy is 
 in itself a virtue. Yet that man alone is educated 
 who is competent to enter into the heritage of all 
 the ages, by living over again and integrating in 
 himself the intellectual life of the race at the 
 various levels of its achievement. By watching 
 eagerly and disinterestedly the whole pageant of 
 humanity unfold itself, he will get a grasp of the 
 plan and purpose of it, and by knowing it learn 
 to love it. Life has no meaning unless one can 
 see the whole of it ; and the present can be fresh- 
 ened only by a new sense of its vital connexion 
 with the past. That is the meaning of all the re- 
 nascences. If a man would enter into the king- 
 dom, he must go to school as a little child in the 
 childhood of the race, and use the classics as his 
 book ; but the two streams of classics and science 
 must eventually unite, if the accumulated expe- 
 rience of the past and the present would be ade- 
 quately transmitted to the generations which are 
 to come. 
 
 In every occupation there is a kind of profes- 
 sional cant, and in none is it so elaborately framed
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 123 
 
 as in that which is technically known as profes- 
 sorial. The last man in the world to whom we 
 should apply for a correct opinion upon the value 
 of a thing is he who is engaged in doing it. A 
 Highland piper is apt to possess an exaggerated 
 notion of the place of music in the world and the 
 pleasure which it gives, especially of that music 
 which he performs so well. To the tympanist the 
 sound of the drum alone gives coherence to the 
 various sounds which are produced by other mem- 
 bers of the orchestra; and I have heard the 
 lecturer on poultry in an important University 
 declare that the rearing of hens was the best pos- 
 sible training for the memory, as the birds resem- 
 bled each other so closely whilst in reality they 
 were different. The lecturer in classics did not 
 agree with him ; he thought that learning words 
 out of a dictionary was a better method. It is the 
 professor who is most completely convinced of the 
 importance to the world of that kind of education 
 which he gives. He is the University, but that 
 does not prove the value of the professor, of the 
 University, or of the business in which both are 
 engaged. That must be determined by other con- 
 siderations entirely. 
 
 There is a great gulf fixed between professing 
 to know about a thing and knowing it in reality ;
 
 124 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 and there is a still greater gulf between knowing 
 about a thing and the doing of it. The utmost 
 which is demanded of a professor is that he shall 
 talk about things ; and it is worthy of comment 
 that talk about a thing grows more exuberant 
 after it has passed away. Whilst the Italians of 
 the fifteenth century were painting pictures there 
 were no professors of art, and no professors of 
 literature when the Elizabethans were writing 
 their immortal poetry. Sophocles and ^schylus 
 wrote their tragedies before Aristotle showed 
 them how. The middle Victorian era, in which 
 there was no art to admire, was the period when 
 the art of talking about art was best understood. 
 In America to-day, — and Professor Leacock 
 has reminded us very forcibly that Canada is in 
 America, — where there is neither art, nor litera- 
 ture, nor education, fifteen thousand professors 
 are lecturing before a hundred thousand students 
 in the higher institutions of learning. 
 
 n 
 
 Every professor must have asked himself the 
 question, at least once in his lifetime, — Why 
 does a University exist? During that long period 
 between the death of learning and the birth of 
 science, if the question occurred to a professor 
 in those leisure moments after the siesta was over
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 125 
 
 and the carp fed, he would probably reply that 
 the precise function of a University was to do 
 nothing, and that a professor was performing his 
 whole duty by being a professor, an example of 
 attainment, just as a priest was held to justify his 
 existence by being a priest. 
 
 But in time, the enquiring habit of mind which 
 people have developed under the influence of eco- 
 nomic necessity and of the scientific method, and 
 the rising conscience within the academic body, 
 have constrained the Universities to give a more 
 adequate account of themselves in justification of 
 their existence. In short, they are explaining their 
 usefulness to the community. 
 
 The most specific account which has been given 
 in recent years of what is assumed to be at least 
 one function of a University is that which is con- 
 tained in the Report of a Joint Committee of Ox- 
 ford University and Working-class Representa- 
 tives on the Relation of the University to the 
 Higher Education of Work-people. This Report 
 was issued at the end of the year 1908, and bears 
 as title " Oxford and Working-class Education." 
 It may be obtained from the Clarendon Press for 
 the sum of one shilling. 
 
 It is conceivable, of course, that in the long 
 period of a thousand years the function of a Uni- 
 versity may have changed, and no one, least of
 
 126 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 all the professors, be aware of the fact. In Eng> 
 land many of the colleges which constitute the 
 Universities were organized for the benefit of 
 *'poor men living on alms," paiiperes ex eleemo- 
 syna viventes, because, as William of Wykeham 
 in founding New College in 1386 affirmed, " Christ 
 among his works of mercy hath commanded men 
 to receive the poor into their houses and merci- 
 fully to comfort the indigent." In certain other 
 colleges the members were forbidden to keep dogs, 
 on the ground that " to give to dogs the bread of 
 the children of man is not fitting for those who 
 live on alms." The members were not " poor men " 
 exclusively in all colleges. The foundress of Bal- 
 liol urged the richer ones to live " so temperately 
 as not to weigh down the poor by reason of bur- 
 densome expenses," and she urged the fellows to 
 choose as a scholar the candidate who combined 
 poverty, excellence of character, and learning. 
 In the statutes for Merton the foundation was not 
 for really poor men, but for pauperes secundarii, 
 or second-class poor. Other colleges were designed 
 by great prelates as an accommodation for per- 
 sons who by blood or other ties were dependent 
 upon them. 
 
 In the United States also, the various colleges 
 were organized for a specific purpose. Yale was
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 127 
 
 chartered in 1701 for the propagation of Congre- 
 gational theology ; the college of New Jersey, com- 
 monly called Princeton, was established in the in- 
 terests of Presbyterian dogma ; and Harvard was 
 founded in order that " ministers and other use- 
 ful persons might issue forth." It was not long 
 before a visitor at Oxford was obliged to repri- 
 mand the scholars in the words : " Some there are 
 among you who, desiring to live delicately, make 
 the modus of your expenditure to exceed that 
 which your founder by rule appointed" ; and Lat- 
 imer declared : " If ye bring it to pass that the 
 yeomanry be not able to put their sons to school, 
 I say ye pluck salvation from the people. By 
 yeomen's sons the faith of Christ is, and hath 
 been, maintained chiefly." The English colleges, 
 like the American, were especially designed for 
 purposes which in those days were believed to have 
 something to do with religion, but no English lad 
 now goes to Oxford because he is poor and few 
 because they are religious, any more than an 
 American boy goes to Yale because he is imbued 
 with the tenets of Congregationalism ; or to Prince- 
 ton because his lips have been touched with a 
 coal from a Presbyterian altar ; or to Harvard be- 
 cause he is desirous of becoming a minister or even 
 an otherwise " useful person." In time the Uni-
 
 128 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 versities which were founded for purposes of learn- 
 ing and religion came to exist for the benefit of 
 professors who were not necessarily learned or 
 religious, and there seemed nothing incongruous 
 in the transformation. 
 
 One should not fail to notice that these institu- 
 tions continue to be conducted for the benefit of 
 the staff as well as for the benefit of the student, 
 because it has something to do with the rivalry 
 which exists between Universities in "attracting " 
 young men by offering them opportunities for 
 learning a trade ; since, when the students are 
 gathered together, the public may be appealed to 
 for support on the ground of increasing num- 
 bers, as a man might plead the excuse of an in- 
 creasing family for obtaining public charity. This 
 is the origin of the bitterness between the Uni- 
 versity of New York and Columbia, as disclosed 
 in the recent writings of President MacCracken 
 of the smaller institution, who alleges that Colum- 
 bia is attempting to "freeze him out" by protest- 
 ing that there is room for only one University in 
 New York. It was he, I believe, who first employed 
 the term " educational trust." 
 
 It is quite possible that the ancient belief is a 
 mistaken one, that a University exists for the pre- 
 servation and advancement of learning and for
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 129 
 
 the formation of character by a process known as 
 education. Possibly the modern belief is the cor- 
 rect one, that the function of a University is the 
 teaching of trades. So important a divergence of 
 opinion might well be investigated by professors of 
 education, to ascertain if the one is exactly right 
 and the other exactly wrong. 
 
 It is a common belief, especially in England, 
 that the American Universities have endeavoured 
 to make their usefulness apparent by casting away 
 any tradition of learning and religion which may 
 have lingered beyond its time. Indeed there ap- 
 pears to be some ground for this view of the case. 
 One of themselves has said it. The " Evening 
 Post," February 6th, 1909, gives a vivid account 
 of the manifold activities of the American student, 
 which, if not entirely accurate, will serve for pur- 
 poses of illustration : " From early September to 
 Thanksgiving Day there is football, with the only 
 intermission of election day, when the under- 
 graduate is a ' husky watcher ' at the polls in the 
 interest of some reform movement. From Decem- 
 ber 1st to the middle of January he plays basket- 
 ball, trains for hockey, and accepts sporadic en- 
 gagements as strike-breaker and tenement-house 
 investigator. Then comes the first snow, and for 
 nearly a month he is with the street-cleaning
 
 130 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 department. He works odd days for the Interbor- 
 ough Company, testing how fast a car can be 
 emptied, and filled by means of the tandem for- 
 mation. The last two weeks in February he passes 
 his days in the psychological laboratory, being 
 tested for colour and rhythm-sense and living on 
 benzoate of soda. In March, indoor baseball prac- 
 tice begins. In April, spring practice on the river 
 begins. From June to September he plays sum- 
 mer baseball. After four years of such toil, he 
 gets his deserved degree of Bachelor of Arts." 
 
 In some institutions courses are offered in card- 
 ing and spinning, weaving and dyeing, and a de- 
 gree of Bachelor of Engineering is offered at the 
 end of this study of textile industry. The Uni- 
 versity is put to the question : " Do you pay ? " 
 The matter is quite frankly stated in the calen- 
 dars of the smaller American Colleges. In one 
 we read : " Does it pay to educate ? What are 
 you worth ? As a servant, $140 a year. As a day 
 labourer, $300 a year. As a farm hand, $240 a 
 year. What may you be worth ? As a teacher, 
 $500 a year up. As a business man, from $1,000 
 a year up. Conclusion: Why not increase your 
 value ? Education only will do it." In other forms 
 it appears thus : " College men draw better sala- 
 ries than other men and succeed better in busi-
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 131 
 
 ness undertakings " ; " Demand for our graduates 
 over five times more than can be filled"; "Our 
 graduates are sought for the most lucrative and 
 responsible positions; one of them handled over 
 a million dollars for his firm in one year." Even 
 in the Faculty of Arts, especially of the smaller 
 Universities, the students are merely learning the 
 trade of a schoolmaster, or rather of a schoolmis- 
 tress, since the boys are being rapidly turned out 
 of that " profession " by the girls, to take refuge 
 in the engineering classes. I am not questioning 
 the value of these achievements, but merely ex- 
 pressing a doubt that their accomplishment has 
 anything to do with a University. 
 
 It is a common belief, especially in America, 
 that a different view prevails in England, of 
 which the late Dean Johnson was the best expo- 
 nent. This shrewd observer was never done pro- 
 testing that men who were concerned only about 
 becoming surveyors, miners, engineers, lawyers, 
 dentists, doctors, and builders, had no place in the 
 company of men who desired an education for the 
 sake of its effect, real or fancied, upon the indi- 
 vidual. He observed that " engineering students " 
 wore overalls, smoked their pipes, and cursed. 
 He had previously observed that plumbers also 
 were addicted to these practices, and he could
 
 132 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 detect no essential distinction between the two 
 classes, although he did remark that a plumber 
 was a plumber; whereas these graduates knew 
 little or nothing of their business upon the day 
 of leaving the University and entering into the 
 world. The time to study the application of sci- 
 ence, he thought, was after, and not before, one 
 had acquired a scientific mind, and the time to 
 develop a scientific mind was after it had been 
 educated. The principles of engineering, he ad- 
 mitted, might well be taught, even in a University 
 which was concerned with education, to those who 
 were qualified to receive instruction ; but to en- 
 able a boy to manage an unreal steam-engine, to 
 bestow upon him an agility in looking out figures 
 from tables and ordinates from curves of this or 
 that function was not to make of him either an 
 educated man or an engineer. Certainly an un- 
 prejudiced observer will find matter for wonder 
 in a University which confers a doctorate upon a 
 man who is expert in remedying defects in the 
 teeth, and has a chair which is filled by a pro- 
 fessor of " orthodontia," whilst it refuses equal 
 recognition to the man who wipes a joint, or does 
 "crown and bridge work" upon material which 
 is not attached to the human frame. 
 
 This belief, however, that the Universities of
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 133 
 
 England regard their charters as valid only so 
 long as they have something to do with the pre- 
 servation and advancement of learning is not so 
 commonly held since the publication of this Re- 
 port to which I have referred. Nothing could be 
 more admirable than the form in which it states 
 the case for direct utility. The argument is con- 
 ducted with a full desire for fairness, a spirit of 
 concession, a sweetness of temper, and a winsome- 
 ness, which convinces one that the University has 
 wrought her perfect work upon the minds and 
 hearts of those who were engaged upon it, even 
 upon those members who are described as work- 
 ing-class representatives, although one would be 
 willing to learn what part they had in the expres- 
 sion of sentiments so beautiful in themselves and 
 so admirably stated, especially the part which was 
 taken by one member of the Committee, who is 
 described as High Secretary of the Independent 
 Order of Rechabites. A note might well have 
 been added to the Report defining exactly what 
 a Rechabite is, so that one might form some opin- 
 ion of his capacity for entertaining correct opin- 
 ions upon education. If he had descended from 
 Jonadab, the son of Rechab, by ordinary genera- 
 tion, we might be disposed to accept his opinion 
 upon the undesirability of building houses, sow-
 
 134 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 ing seed, planting vineyards, and drinking wine ; 
 and yet question his authority in matters pertain- 
 ing to a University which neither dwells in tents, 
 nor abstains from " pots full of wine and cups." 
 This Keport is merely an amplification of the 
 enquiry which Sir Leslie Stephen informs us 
 was addressed to his brother, Sir James Fitz- 
 james Stephen, by their tutor : " Stephen, major ; 
 if you do not write good longs and shorts, how 
 can you ever be a man of taste ? If you are not a 
 man of taste, how can you ever hope to be of use 
 in the world?" The Committee has arrived at 
 the conclusion that in a University education 
 alone lies the sovereign remedy for all social ills, 
 and they appear to believe that those who suffer 
 from those ills are under a similar misapprehen- 
 sion. They tell us that "education of the highest 
 type given by the Universities has entered into 
 the consciousness of large bodies of organized 
 work-people as an essential element in their con- 
 ception of human welfare " ; and " that the eleven 
 millions who weave our cloths, build our houses, 
 and carry us safely on our journeys demand Uni- 
 versity education in order that they may face 
 with wisdom the unsolved problem of their pre- 
 sent position." There are other things also which 
 appear to have entered at least into a portion of
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 135 
 
 their consciousness : that they should receive ten 
 hours' pay for eight hours' work, that in their old 
 age they should be supported by their more thrifty 
 neighbours, and that they should enter Parlia- 
 ment. We are all too prone to believe that human 
 welfare lies alone in a class which is different 
 from our own. 
 
 The fact of the matter is that the working- 
 classes — if one must continue to employ the words 
 of the Report — are mistaken and the professors 
 are mistaken too, in assuming that a University 
 education, or any other education which has its 
 origin in books, is of much value for a workman 
 or a professor either, unless the individual has a 
 mind which will profit by it. The experiment has 
 been tried for the past hundred years. It has not 
 produced educated men, and it has produced in- 
 efficient workmen. 
 
 The movement for adult education began late 
 in the eighteenth century, at a time when all forms 
 of folly were even more rife than they are now. 
 In the outset it was of a religious nature, and the 
 benefits which were obtained from religion were 
 wrongly attributed to the education with which 
 it was associated. With the increasing applica- 
 tion of science to industry it was supposed that 
 a new education was required, and Mechanics'
 
 136 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 Institutes attempted to supply the need. By the 
 middle of the century the attempt ended in fail- 
 ure. It was found that the preliminary equipment 
 of the student who had never attended an ele- 
 mentary school was too small for him to make 
 good use of lectures and classes. In all there was 
 probably some disillusionment and disappoint- 
 ment when it was found that the direct effects of 
 technical institutions in bettering the material 
 condition of the individual workman were com- 
 paratively small. 
 
 These two attempts were followed by Univer- 
 sity extension education. Between 1885 and 1908, 
 32,146 lectures were delivered under the control 
 of the Oxford University Extension Delegacy 
 alone, in 577 centres, to 424,500 students. Upon 
 the success of this movement the present Report 
 affords valuable information. It was found that 
 so long as the system was compelled to be finan- 
 cially self-supporting, so long must the lecturer 
 attract large audiences ; it was necessary that 852 
 persons attend the lecture of a second-class lec- 
 turer to raise the money necessary to pay the fee. 
 The lecturers and the subject had to be chosen 
 not on account of their educative value, but with 
 a view to the probability of their drawing such 
 large audiences that the lectures would pay. Sue-
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 137 
 
 cess then tended to be measured in terms of quan- 
 tity not of quality, and if the members fell off 
 from a course, it had to be replaced by another 
 which was more likely to draw. The lecturer then 
 became an orator addressing a public audience. 
 Sir Robert Morant got at the truth of the matter 
 when he said that it was not more lectures that 
 were required, but real solid work. 
 
 The Report recognizes frankly another diffi- 
 culty when it states : " It too often happens that 
 a teacher fails almost entirely when confronted 
 with a working-class audience because he has 
 started from a point of view so different from 
 theirs as to make it impossible for the mind of 
 students and teachers ever to come into real con- 
 tact with each other. The things which he regards 
 as important have seemed to them trivial, and 
 he has never really touched the problems upon 
 which their minds are exercised." Accordingly the 
 teacher is advised to take special steps to get into 
 touch with the working-classes, to appreciate and 
 sympathize with the point of view from which 
 they approach a subject ; but we are not informed 
 how this is to be done. It is as difficult to gfet into 
 touch with the working-class as it is to get into 
 touch with a company of Fellows in a Common 
 Room, and one " cannot sympathize with a point
 
 138 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 of view " from which he believes a false impres- 
 sion is obtained. 
 
 The Committee stumbled upon the truth un- 
 consciously when they admitted that work-people 
 " will not be content with any substitute for Uni- 
 versity education which assumes that they will be 
 unable to enter the University," since " a Univer- 
 sity Extension student, though he may win a cer- 
 tificate, is not as yet stamped thereby with the 
 hallmark of an educated man in the same way as 
 is the recipient of even a pass degree at Oxford." 
 There is the fact forced home bluntly : it is the 
 hallmark which is desired, and not the quality 
 which an honest hallmark signifies. Herbert 
 Spencer stated the truth with that plainness 
 which was habitual to him when he said : " If we 
 inquire what is the real motive for giving boys a 
 classical [University] education, we find it to be 
 simply conformity to public opinion. To get above 
 some and be reverenced by them, and to propi- 
 tiate those who are above us, is the universal 
 struggle in which the chief energies of life are ex- 
 pended. We are none of us content with quietly 
 unfolding our own individualities to the full in 
 all directions ; but have a restless craving to im- 
 press our individualities upon others, and in some 
 way subordinate them. This it is which deter-
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 139 
 
 mines the character of our education. Not what 
 knowledge is of most real worth is the considera- 
 tion ; but what will bring most applause, honour, 
 and respect, — what will most conduce to social 
 position and influence, — what will be most im- 
 posing. As, throughout life, not what we are, but 
 what we shall be thought, is the question ; so in 
 education, the question is, not the intrinsic value 
 of knowledge, so much as its extrinsic effects on 
 others." 
 
 In direct opposition to this statement, which 
 bears upon its face some appearance of probabil- 
 ity, the Committee answers its own questions — 
 *' To what will the education which we wish Ox- 
 ford to offer to work-people lead?" "We have 
 already expressed an opinion that the demand for 
 University education made by work-people is not 
 so much for the facilities to enable their children 
 to compete successfully with members of other 
 classes for positions of social dignity and emolu- 
 ment, as to enable workmen to fulfil with greater 
 efficiency their duties which they owe to their 
 own class, and, as members of their class, to the 
 whole nation. There can therefore be no doubt 
 that, with some exceptions, the working-class stu- 
 dents who go to Oxford will at the end of their 
 two years of study return to the towns from which
 
 140 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 they came, and continue to work at their trades, 
 as before." This opinion, however, is qualified by 
 the words, " The working-class demand that higher 
 education should not sej)arate the student from 
 his own people must not be taken to imply that 
 it is desired that he should necessarily return to 
 the bench or the machine at which he worked be- 
 fore going to Oxford, but that he should in one 
 capacity or another use his education in the ser- 
 vice of his fellows." We may well deplore the ad- 
 vent of working-men to Oxford as classes, not as 
 individuals, if they import with them the methods 
 of the labour unions, which the students of their 
 own peculiar Ruskin College employed last April 
 in their " foolish and disorderly proceedings " 
 against Principal Hird. 
 
 The trend of thought is further indicated in 
 another Section : " What they desire is not that 
 men should escape from their class, but that they 
 should remain in it and raise its whole level. 
 They do not wish, like the Scottish ploughman of 
 fifty years ago, that their sons should be made by 
 a University education into ministers or school- 
 masters." 
 
 These Oxford professors are exactly wrong and 
 the Scottish ploughman was exactly right. They 
 treat the individual as a member of a class ; he
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 141 
 
 looked upon his boy as a single individual, as a 
 man in the University and the Universe. If it is 
 foreordained from all eternity that the world 
 shall be for ever composed not of men but of 
 classes of men rising one upon the other from 
 ploughmen, schoolmasters, and ministers, to pro- 
 fessors, then a co-equal decree may possibly be 
 discovered under which the education proper to 
 each class shall be set forth. The present proposal 
 appears to be that all men shall receive a Uni- 
 versity education : and yet that conclusion is viti- 
 ated by the remark in another section, " It seems 
 to us that the task of educationalists in the fu- 
 ture must be to ennoble the status of every class 
 by supplying it with the form of culture appro- 
 priate to its needs." 
 
 And if the task of educationalists in the future 
 must be to ennoble the status of every class by 
 supplying it with the form of culture appropriate 
 to its needs, by what means shall that form of 
 culture be discovered which is appropriate to the 
 status of every class ? By asking each class what 
 it needs. The students are to " pursue a plan of 
 study drawn up by work-people and representa- 
 tives of the University in consultation." Again, 
 it is affirmed that " the advantage of throwing the 
 local management of the classes into the hands of
 
 142 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 a body representing working-people is that it en- 
 sures that the education offered will meet the 
 needs of work-people." 
 
 A branch of the Amalgamated Society of Rail- 
 way Servants passed a resolution, " that it is inex- 
 pedient for the working-classes to cultivate a closer 
 relationship with Oxford, until the teachings of 
 the Universities are radically altered, so that a 
 truer view of social questions maybe taught, and 
 that it is inadvisable to send workmen students 
 to colleges until the curriculum is made suitable 
 for the training of labour leaders." To this the 
 magnanimous reply is made that the Universities 
 should cooperate with the Railway Servants, " in 
 their efforts to obtain what they want instead of 
 providing, without consulting them, what the Uni- 
 versity thinks they ought to want." Apparently 
 the opposite course led to failure, since the admis- 
 sion is made that " the whole history of the Uni- 
 versity Extension Movement shows that higher 
 education cannot be imposed upon work-people 
 from above, but must be organized and managed 
 by men who belong to themselves. This is in our 
 opinion a fundamental axiom, the neglect of which 
 will be followed by certain failure." And yet the 
 University appears to believe that this partial 
 failure may be turned into success by a nearer
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION" 143 
 
 approximation of extra-mural teaching to the 
 teaching within the walls ; and this is to be ac- 
 complished by the daring experiment of altering 
 the principles upon which for a thousand years 
 education has been conducted. 
 
 A man who is swimming for his life is not 
 likely to make any profitable observations upon 
 meteorology or natation ; and a student who is 
 harassed by poverty is incapable of that calm of 
 mind which is essential for the education which 
 comes from residence at a University. There is 
 something piteous in the account which the Com- 
 mittee give from their own experience of the hope- 
 less struggle. " We are well aware," they say, "of 
 the great difficulties which beset the working-class 
 student, — the lack of books, the crowded home, 
 the often exhausting and mechanical labour, the 
 fear of non-employment that too often absorbs 
 his thoughts. We have known students to sit up 
 not once but regularly, completing an essay, till 
 one o'clock at night, and enter the mill next day 
 at 6.30 ; or to attend classes on Saturday after- 
 noon after a week containing twelve hours over- 
 time over and above the standard 53 hours." We 
 can readily agree that " a man who is supporting 
 a family on 24 shillings a week cannot afford and 
 ought not to be expected to buy more than one or
 
 144 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 two inexpensive text-books " ; but until we are 
 informed what that diligent student was writing, 
 we can offer no opinion upon his wisdom. Indeed 
 there are very few essays which would justify a 
 man's remaining out of his bed either for the 
 writing or the reading of them. 
 
 Much is made of the benefits which will follow 
 to the community from a temporary intermingling 
 of members of various classes in the University, 
 of the knowledge and suggestions which work- 
 people may offer, and of the very valuable insight 
 which they may obtain into the working of Uni- 
 versity institutions. It is not suggested, however, 
 that a professor should perfect his education at 
 the lathe or the bench ; and no mention is made 
 of the value of his knowledge or suggestions in the 
 conduct of a factory. Yet surely a University is 
 quite as complicated a concern as a workshop. 
 We are told that " there must be that free move- 
 ment from one class to another that alone can en- 
 sure that the manual and intellectual work of the 
 nation is performed by those best fitted to perform 
 it, and that fresh streams of ability are continually 
 drawn from every quarter of society " ; but we are 
 not informed by what process the present gradu- 
 ates of the University shall be relegated to manual 
 employments if it is ascertained that they have
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 145 
 
 a more peculiar aptitude for hand labour than for 
 intellectual pursuits. 
 
 Let us suppose that a professor followed this 
 amiable advice and moved from his own class into 
 the class of the agricultural labourer. He would 
 appear to be, and would be in reality, an ill-edu- 
 cated man. It would require years of experience 
 before he was at home in his new environment, 
 before he learned at what date oats must be sown 
 in a certain field, where was the securest spot for 
 setting a night line, which public house sold an 
 ale to suit his palate, and where was the most 
 delectable location in the parish for sunning him- 
 self on a Sunday afternoon. 
 
 The kingdom of learning can be taken only by 
 force. Those who earnestly desire education will 
 find the measure of their desire. Anything in 
 excess of that is useless. There may be as much 
 mental culture in reflecting upon one's inability to 
 procure a degree as in accepting a degree which 
 is thrust upon one. But if the degree is the thing, 
 it can be obtained upon easier terms than the 
 Committee proposes, even if the recommendation 
 be adopted, that scholarships be provided of such 
 an amount as would enable a man to maintain 
 himself in the University, and in some cases as 
 would in addition provide a margin to assist those
 
 146 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 who might be dependent upon him, and who in 
 consequence of his temporary withdrawal as wage- 
 earner might suffer great hardship. Even the 
 married man with a family is to be considered. 
 There are colleges in the United States which 
 offer a degree for fifty dollars, with the usual ten 
 per cent discount, if fully paid in advance. 
 
 In opposition to this theory that University 
 education is the sovereign remedy for all indus- 
 trial evils, I cannot do better than quote the letter 
 which Mr. Jude Fawley, stone-mason, received 
 from T. Tetuphenay, the Master of " Biblioll 
 College " : " Sir, — I have read your letter with 
 interest ; and, judging from your description of 
 yourself as a working-man, I venture to think 
 that you will have a much better chance of suc- 
 cess in life by remaining in your own sphere 
 and sticking to your trade than by adopting any 
 other course. That, therefore, is what I advise 
 you to do." 
 
 It is a gratuitous assumption that education 
 is found alone in a University. There must be 
 many educated men in that class which produced 
 the author of " Pilgrim's Progress " ; and it is 
 questionable if John Bunyan would have been 
 improved by a period of residence in the Oxford 
 of his day, or of our own day either. I am dis-
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 147 
 
 posed to think that if those adscititious circum- 
 stances did not exist which attract boys to Uni- 
 versities, there would be as large a proportion 
 of educated men amongst the working-classes as 
 amongst the holders of degrees, men of sincerity, 
 candour, and simplicity of character and principle, 
 like that other stone-mason whose reminiscences 
 Mr. John Murray has just published. 
 
 The proposal, in short, of this Report is to 
 lower the standard, to substitute for that training 
 which is found alone in schools where the classi- 
 cal and philosophical tradition prevails, a kind 
 of pseudo-scientific, hugger-mugger reading of 
 literature, politics, economics, and languages, 
 such as is considered ample in American Uni- 
 versities. And yet the committee had for its guid- 
 ance the results of this new method as applied 
 not only to secondary education, but also as em- 
 ployed in institutions for the higher learning. 
 The evidence is contained in a report by Mr. 
 F. I. Wylie, secretary to the Rhodes Trustees, 
 upon the attainment of the scholars who went to 
 Oxford from the United States. Mr. Wylie with 
 proper reticence gives it merely as the " prevail- 
 ing opinion " that they have shown themselves 
 alert and versatile, but wanting in thoroughness ; 
 or, " to put it in its baldest form, the criticism
 
 148 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 most often heard is that the American student, 
 while keener than the average undergraduate, is 
 more superficial and more easily satisfied." When 
 Mr. Wylie speaks of the examination of these 
 scholars who came as picked men and weighted 
 with a whole State's learning and prestige, he 
 describes their performance as " very creditable." 
 For the benefit of those who may not appre- 
 ciate the fine significance of this peculiarly Ox- 
 ford judgement, Mr. Fox of New Haven, where 
 Yale College is situated, undertook an exposition 
 in the " Evening Post," October 31st, 1908 ; and 
 he did it with a scientific frankness for which 
 he deserves the praise of all persons who are 
 fond of sound learning. From the United 
 States there were 81 scholars at Oxford, of 
 whom all but six were college graduates, and 
 presumably the average age was two years 
 greater than that of their competitors. Mr. Fox, 
 after an exhaustive analysis, sums up: "The 
 comparison of these results with those achieved 
 by the Englishmen themselves or by the Colo- 
 nials is not favourable to the United States, es- 
 pecially in the two most important schools of 
 Literae Humaniores and Modern History. In the 
 two years 1907 and 1908 there were, in round 
 numbers, 300 names on the honour list. We had
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 149 
 
 one first in Literae Humaniores and two in Mod- 
 ern History. The two scholars from Quebec en- 
 terins: in 1904 both took firsts in Literae Humani- 
 ores. Of the seven from Australia in 1904, four 
 took firsts and two seconds. In outside honours, 
 such as prizes, scholarships, fellowships, official 
 appointments, we have done very little as com- 
 pared with the Colonials. One Canadian gained 
 the Ireland, the Craven, the Chancellor's Prize for 
 Latin Essay, and was made an honorary scholar 
 of Balliol and honorary fellow at Exeter. Two 
 Australians have taken the Vinerian Law Schol- 
 arships, and one of them took also the Eldon 
 Law Scholarship, besides passing first class in 
 the two schools of Bachelor of Civil Law and of 
 Jurisprudence at Oxford, and also in the London 
 Bar examination." As a proper closing of hia 
 review Mr. Fox gives a suggestive point to the 
 argument by informing us that, of the nine stu- 
 dents on the roll of honour, five came from the 
 South of Mason and Dixon's line, where the sys- 
 tem of education in vogue is essentially different 
 from that which prevails in the North. 
 
 Oxford is regarded in all English-speaking 
 communities as the last refuge of the scholar, 
 and for his sake the professor with his little 
 steam-engine or microscope could well be spared.
 
 150 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 This Report is a thing of ill-omen. It offers to 
 debase the currency in deference to a factitious 
 demand from people who do not understand what 
 they are asking, what they want, or what they 
 need. So soon as we are convinced that "learn- 
 ing hath not her own true form nor can she show 
 of her beauteous lineament if she fall into the 
 hands of base and vile persons," we are prepared 
 to assign to the University its true function, 
 which is to be the comfortable and congenial 
 abode of scholars. And what is the business of 
 a scholar? Professor Gilbert Murray answered 
 the question in his inaugural lecture upon " The 
 Interpretation of Ancient Greek Literature," 
 at Oxford, January 27th, 1909. The best life of 
 Greece, he said, represented one of the highest 
 moments of the past life of humanity, and he 
 gave his answer in the words : " The business to 
 which the world has set us Greek scholars is to 
 see that it does not die." They are to act as me- 
 diators between the living and the dead, since with 
 all the permutations of science the main web of 
 life is permanent. It is the business of the reli- 
 gious teacher, as Harnack said, to remind us that 
 a man named Jesus once lived : it is the business 
 of the scholar to remind us that Plato, and Isaiah, 
 and Vergil, though now being dead, yet speak to
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 151 
 
 us, and to interpret to us what they said in terms 
 which we can comprehend. 
 
 By all who have beheld the beautiful city, so 
 venerable, so lovely, so serene, spreading her gar- 
 dens to the moonlight, and felt her ineffable charm, 
 and heard her calling to the ideal, to perfection, 
 to beauty, nearer to the true goal, perhaps, than 
 all the science of Manchester or the Massachu- 
 setts Institute of Technology, the Report will be 
 read with that pain and wonder which could be 
 expressed by no one save Matthew Arnold, whose 
 words, it may be necessary to remind the present 
 generation, I am using. How different is its con- 
 ception of the business of a University from his 
 idea that its purpose was for studying things that 
 are outside of ourselves and studying them disin- 
 terestedly, for the attainment of complete human 
 perfection, for that growth in the variety, fulness, 
 and sweetness of life by which the hard unintelli- 
 gence of the world shall be reduced. 
 
 There are different forms of folly. Each one 
 requires treatment according to its kind, varying 
 from wrath and curse to the bitter jest or dry 
 scoff. For that amiable form which is technically 
 known as professorial, something more mollifying 
 is demanded ; it is so naive, so disinterested, so 
 sincere. It is the role of the politician to play the
 
 152 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 courtier to King Demos with a perpetual " An 
 it please your Majesty " ; and this obeisance of 
 Oxford appears like a clumsy attempt at an imita- 
 tion of that performance which the politician by 
 sedulous practice has learned to do so well. Ox- 
 ford will suffice to herself and to the nation only 
 so long as she remains true to that within herself 
 which has made her what she is. 
 
 I think the statement will go uncontradicted 
 that our schools, colleges, and universities do not 
 especially minister to those high needs which 
 Plato, and Aristophanes, and Montaigne, and 
 Milton proclaimed. Indeed the suggestion that 
 they were intended to do so would be regarded 
 as comical. Let us take a somewhat lower view 
 and assume that education has something to do 
 with making of a man a good craftsman, whether 
 he be professor or carpenter, by which he can 
 earn his living, a good father who will perform 
 his duty towards his family, a good citizen who 
 will perform his duty towards the State. These 
 offices have been performed, and are being per- 
 formed, by men who were educated by the most 
 diverse methods, and indeed by men who have 
 never shared at all in those inestimable advan- 
 tages which are believed to lie in schools and 
 books. Tried by this test, the education through
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 163 
 
 which the professor has attained to his high emi- 
 nence has no superiority over those methods which 
 yield stock-brokers and clerks. Indeed there are 
 incompetent professors just as there are ineffi- 
 cient plumbers. We have all seen men learned in 
 that knowledge which makes them no wiser, " ever 
 learning and never able to come to the knowledge 
 of the truth." The one is as unsuitable for his 
 environment as the other, and in each case the 
 method of his education may have been ill- 
 devised. From this the probability arises that 
 education is not a mould in which all children 
 shall be thrust. 
 
 It is with extreme diffidence that one should 
 enter upon a discussion of the utility of methods 
 of education, because any method will be wrong 
 if applied to any pupil save the one for which it 
 is suited. One principle will suffice for all boys, 
 but a method is valid only for one individual. It 
 would seem at first sight that we might gain 
 valuable information by consulting with men 
 who had succeeded in educating a large number 
 of boys. Following this clue, I applied to a most 
 successful schoolmaster, but the quest was hope- 
 less. He was not aware that he had any method, 
 and he refused to reflect upon the matter lest it 
 might interfere with the spontaneity of his in-
 
 154 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 stincts. Under the influence of the shock to his 
 mind which was produced by the information that 
 various methods were actually being discussed, 
 his own principle was revealed to himself : " To 
 lick a boy if he lied, or pronounced Oceana with 
 a wrong quantity, or did not attend to his games 
 and military drill." By this practice, he said, the 
 boy was taught the unity of all evil, and conse- 
 quently the unity of all good, from which in fur- 
 ther consequence he learned to abhor that which 
 was evil and to cleave to that which was good. He 
 admitted that he had once read a formal treatise 
 upon education in which the subject had been 
 approached from three sides, the moral, the in- 
 tellectual, the physical, and the various aspects 
 of it examined. In this arrangement he thought 
 that there was a defect, since it put asunder what 
 was in reality one ; " for," said he, " it is not a 
 mind, it is not a body that we strive to erect, 
 but it is a man, and we must not make parts of 
 him." 
 
 For purposes of education it is not the method 
 but the teacher which is required, and the essen- 
 tial requisite for a teacher is that he shall be an 
 educated man. " In the choice of a tutor," says 
 Montaigne, " consisteth the whole substance of 
 the boy's education and bringing up," and he
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 165 
 
 would rather commend one who had a well-com- 
 posed and tempered brain than a well-stuffed head. 
 When I said that the essential requisite of a 
 teacher is that he be an educated man I did not 
 mean woman. Men of character are essential to 
 the formation of character in boys. If a teacher 
 would influence his pupils with " those mild and 
 effectual persuasions with the intimation of some 
 fear, but chiefly by his own example," he must 
 be a man. For imparting information, women, 
 or letters, or phonographs will do. Modern edu- 
 cation has arrived at its logical attainment in the 
 female teacher, the correspondence school, and 
 the machine which gives out sounds representing 
 certain facts. 
 
 No matter how adorable the feminine charac- 
 ter, it is not precisely that which one would hold 
 up for emulation by boys who are afterwards to 
 become men. Yet the large proportion of public 
 schools are taught by women who impress upon 
 their pupils the character of women, and very 
 immature or celibate women at that, whilst the 
 process of instruction is going on. Books on edu- 
 cation habitually speak of the teacher as " she," 
 as if the sex were taken for granted. 
 
 To make the absurdity complete, boys and girls 
 are taught in the same class ; and the teaching is
 
 156 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 identical, not on the ground that it is best for 
 either sex, but that it is the same. This method of 
 co-education neglects a fundamental fact of ex- 
 istence : that there is at least some distinction of 
 sex, and some difference between individuals be- 
 longing to each. Professor Leacock very properly 
 insists upon this antithesis when he says : " A 
 girl is by nature a girl, — that is to say, a gentle, 
 timid creature, with an instinctive tendency to 
 nurse a doll or comfort a sick bird, to tell a fib, and 
 to believe a clergyman implicitly, not by convic- 
 tion of dogma, but on account of the smoothness 
 of his broadcloth and the pleasing rotundity of 
 his features. A boy is a rough, brutal animal, with 
 an instinct for breaking glass, killing animals, 
 avoiding the clergy, and regarding grown-up 
 people as liars." Girls have a certain quickness 
 of apprehension which is of inestimable value in 
 the passing of examinations ; and boys, seeing 
 the immediate advantage of that quality, endeav- 
 our to mould their minds after the feminine type. 
 Self-reliance, perseverance to the point of dogged- 
 ness, a contempt of mere smartness, and content- 
 ment with stupidity even, all give place to the 
 desire for rapid impressions and instant results. 
 Communities abandoned to the public school and 
 the female teacher quickly lose that character
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 157 
 
 wbich, for good or bad, is well described as manly. 
 A woman gets what she wants in her own pretty 
 way or by crying for it : a boy soon persuades 
 himself that this ready method is efficacious for 
 him also. 
 
 I am not now speaking of the education of 
 women, having no immediate desire to involve 
 myself in fresh controversy ; but I cannot refrain 
 from endorsing that commendation which Roger 
 Ascham offered to the Marquis and Marchioness 
 of Dorset, who had " brought up their daughter 
 strictly, requiring that she should speak, be silent, 
 dance, walk, and with as much decorum and per- 
 fection as God made the world." I shall set over 
 against this — without comment, and I trust that 
 this reticence will be accounted to me — the judge- 
 ment which Miss Elizabeth Wordsworth delivers 
 upon the same subject in the " Church Quarterly 
 Review " : " We need not only ' good' women, but 
 women whose religion rests upon a secure, intel- 
 ligible foundation, and who are abreast of the 
 theological science of the day." 
 
 We are prone to overestimate the evil which 
 education can work in a boy's nature. He is not 
 affected much by things which have no interest 
 for him, though he may be injured by the stimu- 
 lation of some particular faculty which is already
 
 158 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 over-sensitive. If he is easily enamoured of the 
 relation of functions or of pieces on a chequered 
 board, he may unwittingly develop into a mathe- 
 matician or a chess-player. But with a girl it is 
 otherwise and the danger imminent. Her mind 
 can be saturated with anything and everything. 
 Consequently she is liable to suppress her char- 
 acteristic self without acquiring a new and stable 
 personality. 
 
 So long as education had the high aim of 
 enlightening the mind, subduing the will, and 
 giving to the material at hand the best possible 
 character, it was inevitable that some account 
 should be made of those elements in the nature 
 which have to do with religion. Until our own 
 day education and religion were invariably asso- 
 ciated, and we have not yet succeeded in expound- 
 ing away the force of that important direction, 
 " The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom," — 
 if one may mention that holy name in the hearing 
 of teachers who are of the scientific sect. Let us 
 make the utmost concession to the susceptibili- 
 ties of those who believe that schools are only 
 " national " when they ai'e "non-religious," and 
 substitute any other term which they may choose. 
 The case is no different. Education divorced from 
 religion ends in lawlessness, defiance of authority,
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 159 
 
 and ill-manners in every relation of life. It is the 
 negation of all discipline. 
 
 Of course I am not speaking with praise of 
 those schools in which a system of traditional 
 theology and organized ecclesiasticism is mis- 
 taken for religion; nor of those in which it is 
 considered that the ability to repeat the Lord's 
 Prayer in Latin and draw a map of Palestine 
 is the mark of a religious mind. There is this, 
 however, to be said of schools of a professedly 
 religious character : as a rule they are taught by 
 men who, whether or not they are good men 
 and men of character, are at least in the form of 
 men and possess the authority which comes from 
 strength and not from weakness. 
 
 At the time of the Episcopalian dissent from 
 the Old Church, the traditional association of re- 
 ligion and education remained. After the more 
 thorough Presbyterian dissent from the same 
 Church, some rudiments of the principle were car- 
 ried over and showed themselves in the high place 
 which was given to that compendium of spiritual 
 experience known as the Catechism, commonly 
 called the " shorter," comparatively, that is, to 
 distinguish it from a more elaborate expression 
 of doctrine which was believed to exist. In time 
 the discovery was made that the value of this in-
 
 160 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 strument was intellectual rather than religious ; 
 and a boy who was whipped for his ignorance of 
 the benefits which in this life do accompany or 
 flow from justification, adoption, and sanctifi- 
 cation could not well be blamed if he failed to 
 appreciate the benefits which an apprehension of 
 these doctrines might ensure to him at his death, 
 at his resurrection, or in the life to come. It has 
 always appeared to me significant of this domina- 
 tion of the intellectual over the spiritual that the 
 table of the multiplication of numbers was inva- 
 riably printed upon the little book as a seal of its 
 authority, the obvious truthfulness of " twice two 
 make four " being imputed unconsciously to all 
 which was contained within the covers. 
 
 This superstitious reverence of education is a 
 survival from an earlier stage of civilization, when 
 men believed that persons who had the ability to 
 read and write could in some way influence the 
 condition of the future existence of their less 
 instructed fellow-men, and it was inconceivable 
 that persons so learned should experience any 
 difficulty in making satisfactory arrangements for 
 themselves. In this present life, also, they were 
 entitled to certain benefits, that of clergy, for 
 example, by which one who had been convicted 
 in a secular court could claim a hearing before
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 161 
 
 the ecclesiastical authorities on his own declara- 
 tion of innocence in arrest of judgement. Long 
 after the description of the exact nature of hell 
 was assumed to be allegorical, some traces of this 
 idolatrous worship of education remained; and 
 illiterate persons yet regard with a certain adora- 
 tion those who have skill in the use of letters. 
 
 Probably the statement will go uncontradicted 
 that a boy is sent to school in order that some- 
 thing may be done with his mind, as a girl would 
 go to a school for singing, that something may be 
 done with her voice. Yet it is a curious anomaly 
 that all boys are sent to school upon the assump- 
 tion that they have minds which can be equally 
 trained, whilst the girl must show some evidence 
 that she has a voice which will profit by the la- 
 bour which it is proposed to bestow upon it. 
 
 It is not equally easy to measure the results 
 in each case, and it is somewhat excusable that 
 the mind should receive a vicious training when 
 we reflect that this confusion of knowledge 
 with education has penetrated into every branch 
 of art. The best painter is he who discourses 
 most learnedly about the cuisine of his art. The 
 best singer is one most learned in the anatomy 
 of the mechanism by which voice is produced, 
 like:
 
 162 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 " The young lady from Brussels, 
 
 When they asked, 'Can you sing?* 
 She said, ' My ! What a thing ! 
 But I can tell a whole lot about muscles.' " 
 
 All teaching — even the teaching of art — is 
 tinctured with the fallacy that it must be scien- 
 tific. The case of music will serve for purposes of 
 illustration. In a recent book upon the subject it 
 is asserted that " modern methods contain not one 
 single topic of any value whatever in the training 
 of the voice." As an acute reviewer has observed, 
 this is the language of a charlatan, or of one who 
 believes that all are charlatans save himself ; and 
 yet it is worth examining the ground of the asser- 
 tion. Italy was the cradle of music, and even if 
 we accept the comment of Hans von Biilow as 
 true, that it remained the cradle, inasmuch as the 
 overture, the symphony, the opera, and the ora- 
 torio, which originated there, came to their full 
 development only in other countries, we are yet 
 obliged to admit that in the creation of singers 
 Italy has never been surpassed. These old mas- 
 ters had no method whatever. They had certain 
 precepts which they regarded as essential : sing- 
 ing on the breath, opening the throat, singing the 
 tune at the lips, and supporting the tone. These 
 things they learned by experience. " Listen to
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 163 
 
 me, and do as I do," was their maxim. The old 
 Italian master, Pier Tosi, declared that the only 
 way to learn to sing was to listen to singers, and 
 that was better than any insti-uction whatsoever. 
 Of a somewhat similar tenor is the advice of my 
 colleague, Wesley Mills, that pupils should hear 
 the best singers, note the quality of their tones, 
 and imitate those qualities with their own voices. 
 Accordingly imitation is the rational method of 
 learning to sing. 
 
 But in 1855 Manuel Garcia invented the 
 laryngoscope, and forthwith the teaching of sing- 
 ing became scientific. Pupils were taught anatomy, 
 acoustics, and mechanics instead of being shown 
 how to sing. Not only is such teaching useless, it 
 is fatal to the production of music, since it at- 
 tempts to do consciously what can be done only 
 unconsciously. Throat stiffness is the result, and 
 that is what all teaching aims to overcome. The 
 only way to learn to do a thing is to do it. Gar- 
 cia was the first of the scientific teachers of sing- 
 ing, and yet he was never done protesting that he 
 was not a surgeon, but a singer ; Charles Santley, 
 " the exponent of all that is virile and sincere 
 in the art of song," quoting the dictum of an old 
 master, declared that it was better for his pupils 
 that they should not be aware that they had
 
 164 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 throats, except for the purpose of swallowing 
 their food. There is in this a sound principle of 
 physiology. Even the swallowing of food may be- 
 come difficult when attention is centred upon the 
 process ; an act which is automatic is inhibited. 
 The training of the ear is one half the training 
 of the voice ; the training of the boy is the 
 whole of education. In both cases it must be done 
 unconsciously. 
 
 A problem which is difficult may sometimes be 
 solved by reducing it to simpler terms. Many of 
 the habits of men may be explained by an exami- 
 nation of the conduct of the lower animals. For 
 example, the practice of shaking hands is really 
 an investigation by means of the sense of touch 
 instead of by the sense of smell, which was devel- 
 oped after the wearing of clothes had rendered 
 the earlier method difficult or impossible ; and the 
 utility of clothing was discovered as a result of 
 its employment for purposes of adornment. In 
 the female this decorative motive still persists, as 
 Mr. Spencer has observed ; and he reminds us 
 specifically that "the elaborate dressings of the 
 hair, the still occasional use of paint, the immense 
 labour bestowed in making habiliments suffi- 
 ciently attractive, and the great discomfort that 
 will be submitted to for the sake of conformity,
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 165 
 
 show how greatly, in the attiring of women, the 
 desire of approbation overrides the desire for 
 warmth and convenience." 
 
 But in the attempt to discover the true princi- 
 ples of education by the comparative or anthropo- 
 logical method we must guard against the danger 
 which lurks in all analogy. This method as- 
 sumes an orderly development from the lowest of 
 created beings to the highest, and takes no notice 
 of the possibility that humanity may be what the 
 biologists designate as a sport, that is, a result of 
 a sudden and spontaneous variation from the nor- 
 mal type. Upon this fundamental question there 
 are two opinions which are exactly contrary, 
 and both cannot be right. From the beginning 
 of created beings there has certainly been some 
 change in the status and nature of man ; but 
 whether for better or worse, the authorities are 
 not in agreement. Sir W. M. Ramsay and St. 
 Paul, many of whose comments upon natural phe- 
 nomena were based upon observation which must 
 have been less exact than it would be to-day, 
 thought it was for the worse. Professor Mac- 
 Bride, after a survey of the creation covering a 
 period of 300,000 years, thinks it is for the bet- 
 ter. Until this matter is cleared up by the profes- 
 sional divines, we cannot infer from the effect of
 
 166 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 education upon a monkey or a seal what it would 
 be upon a boy. 
 
 And yet there is something suggestive in ob- 
 serving the conduct of a seal which is taught to 
 beat a drum, or of a monkey which is taught to sew 
 pieces of cloth together. There are two tests of 
 the utility of that process by which these animals 
 are educated to undertake these performances, the 
 effect upon their own character, and the benefit 
 to the world at large. These are also the tests 
 which must finally be applied for determining the 
 value of the education of boys. It is inconceivable 
 that the capacity to beat a drum would be of any 
 immediate advantage to the seal if he were cast 
 back into his native waters. On the contrary, his 
 experience of the public stage, public favour, and 
 applause would probably make his old surround- 
 ings distasteful. The apprehension felt by the 
 framers of the report upon University education 
 for working-people to which I have referred would 
 probably be justified in the case under considera- 
 tion. Their ominous words are : " We cannot con- 
 ceal from ourselves that there are certain dangers 
 on account of the possible risk that the working- 
 classes might be carried off their feet by the social 
 life of Oxford and forget their own people." 
 
 It is imaginable that after generations of edu-
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 167 
 
 cation the animal might utilize his ability to beat 
 a drum to attract fishes to his maw, to obtain an 
 easier sustenance, to increase his social status, to 
 win the admiration and respect of his fellows, to 
 overcome by his superior attainments the stolid- 
 ity, perseverance, and doggedness of one rival, the 
 cunning of another. Although we have now come 
 close to the borders of folly, we have arrived at 
 an explanation of the universal practice of send- 
 ing a boy to school, namely that he shall be ele- 
 vated from the working-class into the exploiting- 
 class. The native East Indian is the great expo- 
 nent of this principle. He says quite frankly that 
 his object in going to school is to rid himself of 
 the necessity of toiling with his hands. The rem- 
 edy which is proposed by persons who never have 
 done a full day's work with their hands is to in- 
 culcate the dignity of labour. The cure for that 
 form of cant is five hours' work at some uncon- 
 genial task, a coarse bite in the shelter of a hedge 
 or factory, and then five hours more, with the 
 prospect of receiving thirty shillings or its equi- 
 valent at the end of a week, and public charity at 
 the end of a life of such labour. Handiwork has 
 always been regarded as identical with, or but 
 little removed from, slavery. In olden times men 
 avoided it by entering the ranks of the clerics or
 
 168 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 going to the wars. Now they strive to emancipate 
 their boys by sending them to school, resolute 
 that they shall not continue to endure the yoke 
 and the additional responsibility of free men to 
 support themselves when they can work no longer. 
 It is not surprising, then, that the workman sends 
 his boy to school as the first step towards compel- 
 ling others to toil for his support. 
 
 Or we might arrive at the principles of edu- 
 cation by a historical enquiry into the methods 
 which were employed in a simpler society than 
 our own ; and that is a labour to which professors 
 of education might well apply themselves. The 
 school is a late product of civilization and a sign 
 of the complexity of life. In the outset the child 
 was educated in the home and instructed in all 
 those principles which would serve to make a man 
 of him. The Indians of North America retained 
 this system of education down to modern times, 
 and so efficient was it that it enabled a band of 
 warriors, so trained and numbering not three 
 thousand, to dominate a continent. They were 
 men of character, though it must seem merely 
 an echo from a teachers' convention, that educa- 
 tion consists in the formation of that. Until our 
 own day schools were employed merely as useful 
 adjuncts to the home, where perfection might be
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 169 
 
 attained in the lesson of obedience. In time, advan- 
 tage was taken of those years of leisure to give to 
 boys some information which was of interest and 
 might possibly be useful at some future time. 
 Eventually the good word "schooling" was wrested 
 from its original meaning and came to signify a 
 process of receiving instruction. Knowledge and 
 knowing was expected to accomplish everything, 
 and it was entirely forgotten that learning must 
 be assimilated and made part of life. The boy 
 was to be made into a kind of reasoning-machine 
 somewhat after the fashion of that new device 
 which one may see in a butcher's shop, which 
 will weigh your meat and calculate the price at 
 the same time. It was shrewdly observed that 
 this process was useful in equipping a boy for 
 getting on in the world, and the product of these 
 schools went forth conquering and to conquer. 
 
 Henceforth instruction was the thing. Know- 
 ledge came to be regarded as the ideal of attain- 
 ment, and education was forced into its shy re- 
 treat. The best example which I can offer of what 
 this system, when pushed to a conclusion, will do 
 for a boy's nature, is the case of John Stuart 
 Mill. This grandson of a Scotch shoemaker was 
 brought up after the most straitest sect of the 
 doctrine of instruction. By the twelfth year of
 
 170 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 his age he had acquired a volume of learning which 
 requires many pages of his autobiography to de- 
 scribe. He had read with a high degree of thor- 
 oughness, according to his own account, nearly all 
 the Greek and Latin writings which are extant, 
 and obtained some mastery over the subtilties of 
 algebra, the calculus, and other portions of the 
 higher mathematics. His mind was fashioned into 
 a reasoning-machine so complete in its operation 
 that even his father was satisfied with the results 
 of his handiwork. And yet it was the impression 
 of various persons that they found him "greatly 
 and disagreeably conceited." Notwithstanding 
 these attainments, in his twentieth year he was 
 " left stranded at the commencement of his voyage 
 with a well-equipped ship but no sail." The foun- 
 tains of benevolence seemed completely dried up, 
 and he passed " a melancholy winter of heavy de- 
 jection." The spirit had gone out of his mental 
 exercises ; his real education began only when he 
 came under the ministration of a human being. 
 
 All those useful arts of life, which in olden 
 times were acquired unconsciously in the home, 
 are now taught in the school in a clumsy way, — 
 the correct employment of the visiting-card, the 
 limits within which the invitation may be issued, 
 the relation which should exist between the chap- 
 erone, on the one hand, and the debutante and the
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 171 
 
 youth, on the other, the advance without shyness, 
 and retreat without appearance of humiliation. 
 The real virtues which might be developed in the 
 home are lost under this thin veneer which is fur- 
 nished by the schools. 
 
 Ill 
 So here we are, the high aim of education aban- 
 doned, the Universities of America frankly teach- 
 ing trades, the Universities of England casting 
 away their tradition of learning, its preservation 
 and advancement, and yet too timid to accept the 
 American ideal in its entirety. The consensus in 
 England and in the United States now is that we 
 must have a new education, and that it is in Ger- 
 many we shall find it. In England there shall be 
 less classics, in the United States more science. 
 The Germans are not afraid of conclusions which 
 are the result of a logical process. We in our phi- 
 losophy, education, and politics always stop short 
 of the inevitable end. Accordingly we propose for 
 ourselves a system which shall include a little 
 classics, a little science, and a little technical 
 training, educating the boy by books and teach- 
 ing him a trade at the same time. We have been 
 trying with rather inconclusive results to train 
 the mind which no man has seen : let us now deal 
 with the body which we can see.
 
 172 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 The German method has produced remarkable 
 results, but that does not prove that it would be 
 equally well adapted to our needs, even if it were 
 possible to adopt it in its entirety. We should 
 as well expect that we could successfully engraft 
 upon our individualistic and lawless natures a 
 system of rigid militarism. And yet, looking deeper, 
 we may discover that forty years ago it was to 
 Germany we went in search of a love for the ideal 
 and a reverence of fact, for a high, and austere, 
 and disinterested view of life. To inculcate the 
 value of these things was Germany's work in the 
 world, wrought out by her unworldly professors, 
 her authors dazzling with the brilliancy of their 
 ideas, her scientists consumed with the pure love 
 of knowledge, and her philosophers whose thought 
 ranged over the whole of human life and aspired 
 upward to a knowledge of God. Shorn of her 
 spiritual strength, Germany sits to-day, a blind 
 giant, toiling in the mill for the benefit of any 
 Philistine who requires meanness and cheapness. 
 Forty years of commercial education has wrought 
 this change in character, and made of the Ger- 
 mans the tinkers of Europe, the bagmen of the 
 world, the supple traders who do not disdain the 
 language of the Hottentot, if only a bill of goods 
 may be sold thereby. To-day, German science
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 173 
 
 and learning have surrendered themselves to the 
 vindication of brute force over moral ideals. 
 
 So soon as the discovery was made that the 
 minds of boys were not much improved by the 
 process known as education, attention was turned 
 to their bodies, and various systems of physical 
 exercise were introduced. At first these exercises 
 were done in a hard, mechanical way, and suc- 
 ceeded only in producing an abnormal muscula- 
 ture without educating the system to a coordina- 
 tion and control of the various groups of muscles 
 for the performance of useful acts. The owners 
 developed into the type of the professional ath- 
 lete in whom hypertrophy was gained at the ex- 
 pense of elasticity, competent to perform certain 
 muscular feats whereby the system became still 
 more rigid and incapable of acquiring new habits. 
 Even to-day in the American schools it is com- 
 mon to see pupils with the bodies of men and the 
 minds of boys as a result of persistent exercises 
 which are divorced from utility. This cult of 
 the body is not new either. The Greeks educated 
 the body ; but their object was the attainment 
 of the perfection of beauty and a heightened per- 
 ception of it. Our object appears to be to produce 
 athletes for the adornment of the drawing-room. 
 
 The Germans have made the simple discovery
 
 174 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 that a boy who is destined to become a barber 
 requires a different training from that which is 
 suitable for a boy who is to become a physician. 
 But we are not so brutal as that. The American 
 theory in the past has been that all boys shall 
 be given an equal opportunity by handicapping 
 them equally with the loss of eight years spent 
 in school, learning something useful, which in the 
 end has turned out to be useless for any purpose 
 whatever. The futility of the old method has been 
 so clearly apprehended that there is now a strong 
 resolution to modify or replace it by a technical 
 training. In this new education also lurks the 
 fallacy of utilitarianism and the paradox that he 
 who seeks shall not find. 
 
 If we could see steadily that all education is 
 one, though there be many roads to it, we should 
 find a way out. But if of technical education we 
 erect a system obviously and nakedly designed to 
 make of a boy a more subservient tool, a less re- 
 luctant part of the machine which we have cre- 
 ated for ourselves, the last state will be worse than 
 the first. If our direct aim is not to make the 
 individual more sensitive, more beautiful even, 
 but consciously to attempt to make him more efiB- 
 cient, better qualified for his job, we shaU end 
 by treating him as if he were a jack-plane or a
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 175 
 
 chisel. I£ he is elected to turn a screw-driver 
 for the remainder of his days, only the sujnnator 
 longus muscle shall be developed : all else would 
 be an obvious waste of time. Possibly it would 
 be an advantage that a man who operates only 
 one machine in a shop shall be taught to operate 
 a machine of a different kind; so that, when he 
 is out of work in one department he may have 
 resort to another, or when a strike occurs the 
 employer shall have a diversity of gifts at his 
 disposal. 
 
 This low view is a very common one, which 
 looks to increased efficiency as part of a ma- 
 chine without any reference to the education of 
 the man; and this is the fallacy which lurks at 
 the root of that technical education in which all 
 English-speaking people now believe that safety 
 lies. Therefore our boys shall have in addition 
 to their books a few weeks' course in plumbing, 
 in plastering, in carpentry, who have never held 
 a tool in their hands, and they are to work in a 
 disdainful, dilettante way, as if they are not in 
 reality plumbers, plasterers, and carpenters, but 
 shall cast off the character which they are assum- 
 ing when they shed their overalls and put on 
 their white shirts. 
 
 Upon the value of this kind of technical edu-
 
 176 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 cation we may gain some opinion if we revert to 
 the image of the seal. If we were to put him in 
 an aquarium and teach him to secure his food, we 
 should have an analogue of the boy in a techni- 
 cal school. There are no observations, so far as I 
 am aware, upon the results of the method ; but 
 possibly the professor would be wasting his own 
 time and the time of the seal, probably doing 
 him an injury by creating the impression in his 
 mind that the agility he was acquiring in leaping 
 for dead fish would be of equal value when he 
 was obliged to find food for himself. The way to 
 learn to do a thing is to do it, and that is as true 
 for boys as it is for singers and for seals. 
 
 Whatever the State does, it does badly. Its pro- 
 pagation of religion ended in failure. Its attempt 
 at education has not succeeded, and all persons 
 must be in agreement that the system which is 
 now in vogue has had a fair test. In England 
 and Wales, during the year 1907, only one-and-a- 
 half per cent of men and women who married were 
 incapable of signing the register. In 1840 the 
 percentage was 33 for men and 50 for women. 
 The fabric which we have erected is so vast, and 
 its failure woidd be so appalling, we refuse to 
 admit that there are signs of decay and that it must 
 come to the ground. The remedy for this form of
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 177 
 
 foolishness is that we should look at the facts. 
 Men who are concerned about keeping the busi- 
 ness of the world moving are aware of them, and 
 by actual experience of life they have arrived at 
 the same conclusion as Montaigne when he de- 
 clared : " Those which according to one common 
 fashion undertake with one self -same lesson and 
 like manner of education to direct many spirits 
 of diverse forms and different humours, it is no 
 marvel if among a multitude of children they 
 scarce meet with two or three that reap any good 
 fruit by their discipline or that come to any per- 
 fection." 
 
 The machinery of society has outgrown the 
 capacity to manage it. Those in control are calmly 
 ignoring all that has been done by the State, and 
 are now engaged in organizing a system of edu- 
 cation of their own. Of this I shall offer one 
 illustration. 
 
 At a meeting of the American Railway Master 
 Mechanics' Association held in 1907, education was 
 the principal subject of discussion. This Associa- 
 tion is composed of 1,000 members representing 
 all the railways in America. They have in their 
 immediate employ 400,000 men. They have charge 
 of the design, construction, and repair of all the 
 railway rolling-stock in America. Their philoso-
 
 178 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 phy of education in the abstract may not be as 
 illuminating as Plato's; but their opinion upon 
 the kind of training which will make boys adapted 
 to their environment must have a very high value. 
 The short of the matter is that they have estab- 
 lished schools of their own in their own works, 
 where boys are taught reading, writing, and arith- 
 metic as preliminary to a special training in the 
 designing, making, and working of machines. 
 
 In commenting upon this system. Professor 
 Hibbard of Cornell, himself " engaged in the pro- 
 fessional business of education," said, " The bare 
 fact of the establishment of this course is a severe 
 arraignment of public school education." The 
 New York Central Lines was the first to initiate 
 the movement in 1900, under the suggestion of 
 Mr. J. F. Deems, and the management of Mr 
 C. W. Cross and Mr. W. B. Russel. Since that 
 time it has extended to the Canadian Pacific 
 Railway under Mr. H. H. Vaughan, to the Santa 
 F^, the Union Pacific, the Southern Pacific, the 
 Central of New Jersey, the Delaware and Hudson, 
 and the Michigan Central ; and, as Mr. Cross af- 
 firmed, the day is not far distant when each railroad 
 will have a system of its own. One of the members 
 made the acute observation that the only other place 
 where an efficient system of education was in vogue
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 179 
 
 was in the State Reformatory for boys who had 
 been fortunate enough to commit a crime against 
 the laws of the people. At the Convention of 
 1908, a committee reported that this new system 
 was the most important influence introduced into 
 railroad organization during the present genera- 
 tion. This is the exact antithesis of technical 
 training. The schools are brought into the shops 
 by private enterprise instead of the shops being 
 brought into the schools by public subsidy. The 
 practical and theoretical are so thoroughly united 
 that " the grease of the shop is literally rubbed 
 into the lesson sheets." 
 
 In quite this fashion were those craftsmen edu- 
 cated who built the pyramids, the Parthenon, and 
 the cathedrals of Europe ; and we must admit 
 that the results were fairly satisfactory, especially 
 when we reflect upon our own achievements in 
 the building line during the past five hundred 
 years. All work is one, and there is no essential 
 distinction between work and play. A profes- 
 sional golf player is believed to have joy in his 
 work, and yet his occupation is no different from 
 that of the man who has been trained from his 
 youth upward to stand upon the steel framework 
 of a bridge and place with swiftness, accuracy, 
 and force successive blows of a long^-handled
 
 180 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 hammer upon the head of a red-hot rivet. One 
 of the best amateur golf-players I ever knew was 
 so trained, and he informed me that both occupa- 
 tions gave him the same delight. 
 
 A boy who is to practise a craft cannot begin 
 too soon, if he is to make it a part of himself. He 
 must begin early, when his muscular sense is 
 easily impressed, and qualify himself not for any 
 one work, but for all work. Then he will perform 
 all tasks with joy. Those precious years of youth 
 our boys spend in schools with books, striving to 
 develop a mind which is not there to develop, and 
 allowing a body to lie idle until it has become too 
 fixed to acquire a habit as part of itself. Our 
 workmen are as inefficient as they are because 
 they have never learned a trade, never impressed 
 it upon their muscular sense, never made it a 
 part of themselves. They are amateurs, and will 
 never be anything else, no matter how long they 
 may continue to exercise their calling. 
 
 Those schools for young children, in which in- 
 structive diversions, object-lessons, and healthful 
 games are prominent features, have their use as 
 a protest if not as a fulfilment. Froebel was right 
 in his attempt to give to children employment 
 suited to their years and nature, to strengthen 
 their bodies, exercise their senses, employ the
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 181 
 
 waking mind, make them acquainted with nature, 
 cultivate especially the heart and temper, and 
 lead them to the foundation of all living — unity 
 with themselves. But in time the garden of chil- 
 dren was transformed into a school-room, where 
 an immature woman presides over such employ- 
 ments as plaiting straw and singing about the 
 bluebird on the branch. The technical training of 
 which so much is heard is already falling to a 
 similar level. A grown boy is set to making a 
 rolling-pin ; and if he shows unusual aptitude for 
 the task, his product is bedecked with a ribbon 
 and suspended in the family sitting-room. 
 
 The master mechanics have given us a hint ; 
 but being actuated not by philanthropy but by 
 business, they cannot take boys at a sufficiently 
 early age or give to them the consideration 
 proper to tender years. If the public funds which 
 are now bestowed upon schools were handed over 
 to railway corporations or other bodies of men 
 equally intelligent, they could receive boys of eight 
 years of age, train their bodies not for one work 
 but for all work, and by training their bodies 
 train their minds. Books are composed of words, 
 and words are a poor substitute for things. A 
 boy who really masters a proposition about angles 
 in Euclid has learned to think straight. With a
 
 182 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 saw and a mitre-box he learns to think straight, to 
 do straight, and he learns about angles besides. 
 He acquires self-control and mastery by striving 
 with material wood to convert square into round 
 by means of cutting-tools, by subduing iron with 
 fire and file, and by compelling the earth to yield 
 fruit after its kind. By converting ugliness into 
 beauty with colour and form he has learned the 
 first lesson in art. All boys would then be trained 
 muscularly, intellectually, and sesthetically up to 
 the limit of the capacity of the individual. The 
 law of natural selection would have free play, 
 and from this sure ground the boy could proceed 
 according to his bent of mind and become crafts- 
 man, scholar, scientist, or artist, and excel as any 
 one. 
 
 From this studium generale each pupil would 
 proceed to the task for which by nature he was 
 designed. The tragedy of life does not lie in the 
 essential unworthiness of the individual, but in 
 his unfitness for his environment, in his relative 
 inefficiency and consequent joylessness. Men are 
 occupying pulpits who would make splendid figures 
 as pugilists or, if they lived in the olden times, as 
 pirates on their own quarter-decks. Through a 
 disinterested love of art men are painting pictures 
 which the world does not want, when they might
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 183 
 
 be skilled workmen, master craftsmen, putting 
 life and beauty into the things of daily need and 
 winning for themselves independence, content, 
 and joy. 
 
 The reason the art of our own time is sterile is 
 because it is apart from life and divorced from 
 utility. The history of aesthetics teaches us that 
 a fine craftsmanship underlies art, and that artists 
 are bred only from a race of craftsmen. If we 
 train the craftsmen, the artist will take care of 
 himself. When we learn that the sculptor is fel- 
 low to the stone-cutter we shall have good crafts- 
 men engaged in pleasurable, gainful, and pleasing 
 employments, instead of bad artists lacking in 
 creative power. Accordingly each boy, as Kous- 
 seau advises, " should learn an honest trade, not, 
 therefore, that of embroiderer, gilder, tailor, 
 musician, comedian, or writer, but the trade of a 
 carpenter," for example. The idolatrous worship 
 of uniformity which has been substituted for the 
 true knowledge of education is worse than a con- 
 dition of universal ignorance of all but that which 
 individual experience teaches. 
 
 It is, of course, a convenience that a craftsman 
 should be able to read and to write, that he should 
 have some knowledge of the process by which 
 numbers are added, subtracted, multiplied, and
 
 184 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 divided; and nature has indicated the time dur- 
 ing which such information could most conven- 
 iently be acquired, if it has not already been ac- 
 quired unconsciously. In the mental development 
 of every boy there occurs a period of unusual stu- 
 pidity lasting about two years. It extends as a 
 rule from the thirteenth to the fifteenth year, 
 and might well be utilized for a more formal in- 
 struction by means of books. Such a process 
 would relegate words to their proper position. 
 Having failed to apprehend that education may 
 come through the avenue of other senses than 
 the eyes, we have laid too much stress upon the 
 value of reading. The educative value of the 
 process depends somewhat upon what one reads, 
 but the main result of shortening workmen's 
 hours of labour is that they have more time to 
 read the newspapers. The pleasure which every 
 child and most men derive from a book is physi- 
 cal, not mental. The contrast of the black letters 
 upon the white page, the arrangement of letters 
 in words of unequal length, the contexture of 
 words in lines, sentences, and paragraphs exer- 
 cises a curious fascination when perceived by the 
 eye. This phenomenon is not peculiar to the child 
 alone, but is observed amongst other animals. If 
 a hen be placed upon its back so that its eyes are
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 185 
 
 fixed upon a white line, it will lie entranced in 
 that position. A cat may have its whole atten- 
 tion absorbed by a piece of coloured glass, and 
 nothing is more common than the hypnotic effect 
 which is produced upon hospital patients by a 
 shifting, shining object upon which they are di- 
 rected to fix their gaze. The main object of 
 reading, then, is to distract the attention, to di- 
 vert the mind ; but the mind which has never 
 dwelt upon any subject whatever does not require 
 distraction or diversion. 
 
 It is only by this means that we can attain to 
 a civilization once more, by each one doing his 
 own work and doing it well, by going about it 
 quietly all the days of his life. A man who is a 
 rail-splitter or a tanner by nature and environment 
 will not split rails or tan hides well if to-morrow 
 he expects to be called upon to preside over the 
 councils of a nation. By this continual eruption 
 of material from the lower strata our society is in 
 a condition of surge and tumult and cannot clarify 
 itself. We have been proclaiming that all men 
 are free. If we were to declare that all men are 
 slaves, we should solve our social problem and be 
 stating the truth besides. If the labourer who digs 
 in the street could but understand that the phy- 
 sician who drives by in his carriage, the rich man
 
 186 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 who strives to look unconscious in Lis motor-car, 
 or the woman who passes in all the pomp of the 
 afternoon, are hedged about as straitly as him- 
 self, he would begin to do his work with content 
 and end by doing it with joy. All work is the 
 same. None is more menial than another. Indeed 
 a physician performs daily for no reward offices 
 from which the meanest servant would turn with 
 scorn and loathing. He is educated, and sees the 
 meaning of what he does. He does his work 
 deftly and takes a pleasure in the doing of it. 
 
 In our time we have tried many experiments 
 based upon an assumed analogy between ourselves 
 and other members of the animal creation. We 
 have returned to Nature. We have eaten un- 
 bolted flour. We have subsisted upon vegetables 
 alone. We have chewed our food to an infinity of 
 attrition. We have clothed ourselves and have 
 gone naked. We have abstained from alcohol or 
 stayed away from church. We have remained idle 
 or compelled others to work. We have read the 
 newspapers. We have voted. We have educated 
 ourselves ; and although our natures may have 
 changed somewhat in the comparatively few years 
 during which we have authentic record of our 
 past career, probably it would be a safe guess, 
 that we change so slowly, that the statement is
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 187 
 
 true for all practical purposes, that we do not 
 change, just as the formula " two and two make 
 four " is sufficiently accurate for casting up an 
 account. Until we have a new breed of boys we 
 can well do without a " new education," and have 
 resort to the old method which was in vogue dur- 
 ing the childhood of the race. 
 
 This method is, in truth, the one for which I 
 plead. It is not new. It is that " complete and 
 generous education that fits a man to perform 
 justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, 
 both private and public, of peace and war." It 
 is as near as town-dwellers may come to that which 
 many a boy has received to perfection in a country 
 home with its multifarious occupation, brought up 
 by intelligent, well-to-do, and godly parents with 
 the assistance of a good schoolmaster armed with 
 a short stick or a dichotomous piece of leather. 
 
 It does not lie within the narrow compass of 
 the essay, with its rigid bounds and difficult form, 
 even to indicate the detail of a plan. I cannot, 
 however, refrain from adding one last word : that 
 such a system would lend itself admirably to the 
 creation of that love of country which is called 
 patriotism by inculcating the obligation of defend- 
 ing it; it would harden the habits into morality 
 and develop the feelings of submission and de-
 
 188 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 pendence into good manners and religion. In such 
 schools boys might be " stirred up with high hopes 
 of living to be brave men, and worthy patriots, 
 dear to God " ; of those exercises they would have 
 an abundance, " which keep them healthy, nimble, 
 strong, and well in breath, which being tempered 
 with precepts of true fortitude and patience will 
 turn into a national valour and make them hate 
 the cowardice of doing wrong " ; and " in those 
 vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm 
 and pleasant," they would not indulge in that 
 " injury and suUenness against nature not to go 
 out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoic- 
 ing with heaven and earth." That was the prac- 
 tice in the Greek schools. The pupils were trained 
 to fear the gods, to honour their heroes, to speak 
 the truth, to defend their native land. We may 
 well compare this rich and miscellaneous grazing 
 with " that asinine feast of sowthistle and bram- 
 bles which is commonly set before them as all the 
 food and entertainment of their tenderest and 
 most docile age," especially in the schools of the 
 United States and of Canada. 
 
 The subject of education is peculiarly rich in 
 paradox. Those who seek it will not find it. The 
 boy who is taught to snatch his piece and run, 
 who contrives his work that it may produce the
 
 THE FALLACY IN EDUCATION 189 
 
 most effect and make the best show, who chooses 
 the thing which serves his immediate purpose 
 visibly, becomes unconsciously insincere and 
 unwittingly selfish. The essence of education is 
 unconsciousness. The pursuit of culture ends in 
 pedantry or pretence, as the pursuit of happi- 
 ness ends in cynicism or misery, as the pursuit 
 of office makes of a man a politician. Nothing 
 that is sought is worth the having when it is 
 found. " Seek and ye shall find " is a favourite 
 inscription for display in the school-room. Rather 
 would one write, " Seekest thou great things for 
 thyself ? Seek them not."
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 
 I 
 
 I AM not insensible to the humour of the situation 
 in which I have chosen to involve myself, expound- 
 ing for the benefit of theologians the fallacy 
 which lies in their theology ; and yet I cannot rid 
 myself of the remembrance that theologians have 
 their humours too. 
 
 In the days of their mediaeval greatness, when 
 they assembled with hieratic pomp for the disputa- 
 tion of questions which were so serious for them 
 and of so little concern to us, it was the custom to 
 appoint a filius terrcB^ a child of the earth, whose 
 function it was with gibe and jest to remind those 
 honoured ones that all human glory is destined to 
 perish. In assuming this congenial character, I 
 shall neither resent the taunt nor disclaim the 
 credit that this self -election to the humble office of 
 speaking as a fool has been done with perspicacity. 
 
 If we relied entirely upon research in a dic- 
 tionary, we should say that theology was merely 
 talk about God, as literature is talk about life, in 
 which the talkers are more concerned about the
 
 194 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 manner of saying than with the thing itself. Com- 
 ment upon life is mistaken for life, as a theory of 
 God is substituted for God. But what do theolo- 
 gians imagine theology to be, and whom shall we 
 put forward to speak for his fellows ? The name 
 of John Knox leaps to the mind instinctively, 
 but he would involve us in needless controversy; 
 and if we gave place to Cotton Mather, another 
 favourite, he would be sure to say something fool- 
 ish, though he would say it in excellent language. 
 Repressing these predilections, let us enquire of 
 Cardinal Newman what theology is. This selection 
 of spokesman is a concession to fairness, because 
 Cardinal Newman speaks with sincerity, well and 
 clear. Also he has other specific qualifications for 
 the office which may be cited by way of cre- 
 dentials. " From the age of fifteen," he writes in 
 that great apology for his life, " dogma has been 
 the fundamental principle of my religion ; I know 
 no other religion ; I cannot enter into the idea 
 of any other sort of religion ; religion, as a mere 
 sentiment, is to me a dream and mockery." To 
 complete the category of his credentials for the 
 office of public exponent, we may add one further 
 affirmation : " I loved to act as feeling myself in 
 my bishop's sight as if it were the sight of God." 
 Bishops at least will agree that Cardinal Newman
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 195 
 
 has spoken in the proper theological spirit, and 
 that the selection is not unwise. 
 
 " By theology," in his " Second Discourse," 
 our witness affirms, " I simply mean the science 
 of God, or the truths we know about God, put into 
 a system, just as we have a science of the stars 
 and call it astronomy, or of the crust of the earth 
 and call it geology." That is a plain definition. 
 The men of science took the theologian at his 
 word. The astronomers and geologists welcomed 
 him to their ranks ; but they insisted that he 
 should employ the scientific method. Their interest 
 lay not in what he said, but in what he could prove 
 according to the principles which he chose to adopt. 
 That was not asking too much. His attempt to 
 make God a subject of scientific speculation ended 
 in failure. Nothing was proven. 
 
 This was the last and fatal stand of the theo- 
 logians. They took into their hands the carnal 
 weapon of science ; they perished by it. That has 
 ever been the result when the sword of the spirit 
 was abandoned for other means of contest. The 
 employment of science in matters of the spirit has 
 succeeded no better than the employment of force 
 or political device. 
 
 To us in these days the marvel is not the splen- 
 dour of the " Apologia " which Newman made,
 
 196 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 but that it should have had to be written at all ; 
 that, in short, he should have felt there was any- 
 thing to apologize for. If to him ^^ the jure divino 
 was the voice of my bishop in his own person," 
 he should not have been put to the question, and 
 compelled to asseverate that he " scorned and de- 
 tested lying, and quibbling, and double-tongued 
 practice, and slyness, and cunning, and smooth- 
 ness, and cant, and pretence." The reason for this 
 present-day toleration is not far to seek. The num- 
 ber of theologians is inconsiderable who protest, 
 as Newman did in his " Lyra Apostolica," that 
 " it would be a gain to the country were it vastly 
 more superstitious, more bigoted, more gloomy, 
 more fierce in its religion, than at present it shows 
 itself to be." 
 
 Conduct of this nature was provocative of " athe- 
 ism " in the minds of the scientists ; and it is worth 
 remarking that the last atheist disappeared with 
 the last theologian. I have not seen one these 
 thirty years, with the single exception of a village 
 shoemaker last summer, who appeared to combine 
 in himself the characteristics of both. I should 
 add that, upon further enquiry, this humble per- 
 son turned out to be nothing more than a " free- 
 thinker " ; that is, he thought about things as 
 freely as his limited intelligence would permit,
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 197 
 
 and the opprobrious epithet was fastened to him 
 because he protested that religion did not consist 
 in submission to ecclesiastical authority. What 
 made the situation more perplexing was that this 
 anomalous person was a man of good behaviour, 
 of great boldness in his faith, especially apt to 
 teach, — indeed possessing those qualities which 
 are specifically commended in a bishop or deacon. 
 During the present generation this delusion 
 that science has something to do with religion has 
 wrought havoc in the lives of men, on account of 
 the previous assumption that theology had some- 
 thing essential to do with religion. The theologians 
 had reason to fear that the report of a Commis- 
 sion appointed to study the formation of the earth 
 and the animals which dwell upon it might be 
 at variance with the account which was given by 
 early Hebrew writers. Their theology was based 
 upon a tradition which was hard to distinguish 
 from a legend. Religion was inextricably bound 
 up with theology, and based with it upon the crust 
 of the earth instead of in the hearts of men. Their 
 science turned out to be false ; and we must not 
 blame the scientists too severely for concluding 
 that their theology was as false as their science, 
 or for casting suspicion upon religion, their com- 
 pulsory ally.
 
 198 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 These ruthless investigators were put under 
 the ban. They endured the penalty with apparent 
 nonchalance. Living in an age when the Eras- 
 tian doctrine of state supremacy in ecclesiastical 
 matters was sufficiently established to prevent the 
 fires being lighted in this world at least, and 
 taking advantage of the lack of certainty which 
 exists about the arrangements for the punishment 
 of obduracy in the next, they hardened their 
 hearts and declared that men could get along 
 very well without religion. When the pressure 
 was lifted, this fallacy also disproved itself. A 
 scientist may now be as religious as he likes, and 
 no aspersion be cast upon his knowledge by the 
 scientists, nor upon his religion by the theologians. 
 
 Science is not the only thing of importance 
 in the world. Let us not, however, think more 
 lightly of it than we ought ; for the study of it 
 has this advantage at least : it promotes a desire 
 for correct opinions, for uprightness of under- 
 standing, and is a remedy against the spirit of 
 lying, because a man who devotes his mind to the 
 discovery of facts takes no pleasure in the inven- 
 tion of falsehood. Also it has helped to rid the 
 world of much theological rubbish, so that reli- 
 gion may prevail. 
 
 If science had anything to do with religion,
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 199 
 
 where would the saints appear? To the eyes of 
 Anaxagoras the sun was " a red-hot stone twice 
 as big as Peloponnesus," and to the eyes of Jesus 
 the sun rose every morning. To Paul the uni- 
 verse appeared as a three-storeyed edifice. The 
 lowest storey was the realm of the dead. Upon 
 it was erected the terrestrial world, and over it 
 the heavens with their inhabitants. Heaven was 
 a series of arched domes superimposed one upon 
 another, and, as we are Informed elsewhere, con- 
 taining many mansions. He had visited the third 
 of these heavens. In this world evil spirits were 
 hovering about, and they were so susceptible to 
 female beauty that women were obliged to veil 
 their faces as a protection for themselves and for 
 the evil spirits as well. 
 
 Cardinal Newman, who aspired to create a 
 scientific theology which would rank with geology 
 and astronomy, had a poor equipment for the task. 
 His views of cosmology were as primitive as those 
 which were taught in the schools of Alexandria. 
 Angels, he considered, were employed to carry 
 on the economy of the visible world, and were the 
 real causes of motion, light, and life, and of those 
 elementary principles which are called the laws 
 of nature. Besides the hosts of evil spirits, his 
 system made provision for a middle race, Baifiovia^
 
 200 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 neither in heaven nor in hell ; partially fallen, 
 capricious, wayward ; noble or crafty, benevolent 
 or malicious, as the case might be. These beings, 
 he thought, gave a sort of intelligence to races, 
 nations, and classes of men ; and so he accounted 
 for the varying character of states and govern- 
 ments. He found confirmation of this view in the 
 mention of " the Prince of Persia " in the pro- 
 phecy of Daniel, and of " the angels of the seven 
 churches " in the Apocalypse. Newman was a 
 grown man when he made these bold speculations, 
 and a further development of the doctrine was 
 completed in 1837, at a time when he was thirty- 
 six years of age. If the scientific men of his time 
 were concerned at all with these notions, they 
 must have thought them extremely silly, and 
 have placed an equally low degree of credibility 
 upon his exposition of the nature of God, when 
 it was attempted by the methods of the astrono- 
 mers and geologists, which he showed himself 
 so incapable of employing. To us the lesson is 
 that a man may be religious and be devoid of 
 both science and common sense. 
 
 A scientific conception of the Universe has 
 nothing to do with faith, nor with goodness and 
 tjreatness of character : " Le coeur a ses raisons 
 que le raison ne conn ait pas." Accuracy of opinion
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 201 
 
 has nothing to do with religion and little with 
 conduct. False opinions may be exchanged me- 
 chanically for true opinions, without in the least 
 altering the habit of mind by which false opinions 
 are produced. 
 
 Newman had a small mind. He devotes four 
 pages of his " Apologia " to recording a tiresome 
 correspondence between himself, young men, their 
 uncles, and their bishops ; and eventually it turned 
 out that the whole bother was due to the fact that 
 " an anxious lady had said something or other 
 which had been misinterpreted against her real 
 meaning." These were the people who were cir- 
 culating new and ascetic opinions in the Common 
 Rooms of Oxford when Froude left, and new 
 perambulators in the parks when he returned. 
 But Newman's real defect was his preoccupation 
 over his own soul. At all hazards he was bound to 
 save it. That is the egoism which Jesus rebuked 
 with the words : He that loseth his life shall find 
 it. This lack of humanity is the mark of that 
 class of theologians which we are for the moment 
 considering, and it ends in that form of hatred 
 and cruelty which is known specifically as odium 
 theologicum. All sin, if tracked to its ultimate 
 lair, will be found in cruelty, which is a much 
 deeper saying than appears from a view of the
 
 202 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 surface. Cruelty is the besetting sin of the lesser 
 theologian. It is that which has always qualified 
 him for a seat in the Sanhedrim, and for the 
 sacred office of the Inquisition. 
 
 We can always get some light upon a witness 
 from the men whom he admires and the qualities 
 upon which that admiration is based. Newman 
 was " in the closest and most affectionate friend- 
 ship " with Richard Hurrell Froude, and refers 
 to " the gentleness and tenderness of nature, the 
 playfulness, the free elastic force and graceful 
 versatility of his mind." Mr. Herbert Paul fur- 
 nishes us with some fine examples of this " play- 
 fulness " of Hurrell Froude in the treatment of 
 his young brother, whom we know as James 
 Anthony. He would take the lad by the heels 
 and stir with his head the mud at the bottom of a 
 pond. He threw him out of a boat, and with fine 
 theological intuition persuaded him that a certain 
 wood was haunted by a devil. Hurrell and his 
 archidiaconal father joined forces in beating the 
 boy because he would not admit the truth of a 
 false charge, and threatened him with continued 
 repetitions until he should confess. To a more 
 humane generation this behaviour does not appear 
 to be mere " playfulness," but rather the conduct 
 of " superstitious, bigoted, gloomy, fierce " men,
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 203 
 
 whom to possess, Cardinal Newman supposed was 
 to the country so great a gain. Following the 
 advice of Paul, these theologians looked into their 
 own hearts for proof of the existence of God, and 
 there they found the spirit of hatred which they 
 attributed to Him. God created man : men retort 
 by creating God. 
 
 The theologians are much like the logicians. 
 They take an event in human experience and re- 
 flect upon it. The logicians discovered that a man 
 may come to a correct conclusion by a process of 
 reasoning, and they proceeded to examine the 
 steps by which he arrived. Eventually they de- 
 vised a series of names and a system of formulae ; 
 and protested that no man could arrive at a cor- 
 rect conclusion unless he followed their directions. 
 The logician made the unwarranted inference that 
 he was the epitome of reasoning humanity with 
 his magical devices, whilst in reality he was a bar 
 to fresh perception. But in our own time men 
 who were ignorant of the apparatus of the logi- 
 cians attained to definite conclusions in quite other 
 fashion upon such matters as the formation of 
 the earth's crust and the evolution of the animals 
 which inhabit it. The fabric of formal reasoning 
 fell to the ground to make way for the coordina- 
 tion of successive perceptions of actual things.
 
 204 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 The theologians and their allies the ecclesias- 
 tics also went too far in applying human logic to 
 divine affairs, and mistook themselves for God, 
 sitting in the temple and shewing themselves that 
 they were God. But they too were rudely jolted 
 from their high place when men discovered anew 
 that God may be found without their interven- 
 tion, by all who seek diligently in the spirit of 
 truth. By this short cut they were put upon one 
 side. 
 
 The form of society which we know as modern 
 had its origin at the time when men began to 
 popularize what had been regal, to civilize what 
 had been military, to laicize what had been cleri- 
 cal. That great movement which with some degree 
 of vagueness is called the Reformation, was a 
 protest of the laity against ecclesiasticism, and 
 not a contest for the superiority of any rival set 
 of dogmas. The Renascence was something more 
 than a protest against ecclesiastical Christianity : 
 it was a frank revival of Paganism. In the nine- 
 teenth century the great movement was the di- 
 vorce of science from both theology and ecclesi- 
 asticism ; but the process of laicization is not yet 
 complete, and many anomalies remain. Of these, 
 one example will serve for Protestants and Catho- 
 lics alike. We still hold to the tradition that
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 205 
 
 none but the clergy can read and write. In the 
 olden times a criminal might escape the penalty 
 of his crime by pleading that he was a cleric. In 
 time this righteousness was imputed to all who 
 had some rudiments of book-learning ; and to 
 this day the idea persists that there is something 
 in the personality and office of an ecclesiastic 
 which qualifies him for a seat upon a school- 
 board. 
 
 One who occupies his leisure with the reading 
 of theology will not necessarily attain to any 
 unusual knowledge of God ; but he will get a fine 
 understanding of theologians, because they are 
 more commonly speaking of one another than of 
 God, and not always in the most complimentary 
 terms. The words liar, innovator, traitor, rogue, 
 robber, murderer, are frequently in their mouths. 
 I am not saying that these epithets are lacking 
 in definitive value. They are accurately descrip- 
 tive, when applied to men whose forgeries lie 
 upon every page of the two Testaments, who pol- 
 luted that well of truth, who falsified the words 
 of Jesus, and wrested his meaning to their own 
 ends. 
 
 Traditional theology was an attempt to inves- 
 tigate the nature of God by sheer force of human 
 reason, in much the same way that Plato recom-
 
 206 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 mended that astronomy be studied, without even 
 looking at the heavens. It was not long before 
 these theologians abandoned all thought of get- 
 tins: near to the heart of God in the task of dis- 
 closing their own natures to the world. Their 
 opinions were dictated by hatred. Their deci- 
 sions, when they assembled in conclave, were 
 often determined by political considerations. 
 Their devices were the outcome of conspiracy, 
 and they had no compunction about altering 
 them secretly before they were promulgated, if 
 occasion demanded. Many an opinion of the 
 " early fathers " and of the " early church " was 
 fabricated in the chambers of women and in the 
 cabinets of politicians, who were no more scrupu- 
 lous then than they are now. 
 
 For purposes of illustration we may select the 
 last of the eighteen ecumenical Councils, com- 
 monly known as the Council of Trent, which 
 condemned the doctrines of the Reformation con- 
 cerning the Bible, original sin, and justification. 
 I shall follow the account of Bishop Stubbs, a 
 historian who may be trusted to write in the true 
 theological spirit, since he accepts the fall of 
 Adam as an event to which political consequences 
 may be traced, and disclaims responsibility for 
 the "infidelities and unbeliefs" with which David
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 207 
 
 Hume corrupted the Germans, on the ground that 
 the author of them was a Scotchman. 
 
 This Council was the means by which the 
 Emperor worked upon the Protestants and tlie 
 Pope worked upon the Emperor. When the Pope 
 wished to help the Emperor he called the Council. 
 When he wished to thwart him he dismissed it. It 
 did not suit the Pope that the Council should be 
 strong, lest Charles might gain control of it and 
 revive the Council of Basel, and even insist upon 
 Papal responsibility. The Pope did not love the 
 Protestants ; yet he was willing to aid them for the 
 sake of injuring the Emperor. Again, he would 
 countenance the Council if for the time being; 
 he could score against the Protestants. They, 
 on their part, saw clearly enough that a Council 
 under either Pope or King would be one-sided, 
 and not ecumenic, Teutonic, or national. 
 
 Before the Council began, Charles was in arms 
 against the League of Smalkald, each side wait- 
 ing for a decree to attack or be attacked. Whilst 
 the Council was sitting, Charles gained a suc- 
 cess, and the Pope, alarmed at his growing great- 
 ness, induced half the Council to adjourn to 
 Bologna, on the pretence that there was danger 
 from the approaching plague. Charles then sum- 
 moned the Diet at Augsburg to petition the Pope
 
 208 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 that a full Council be called. He bargained with 
 the states to receive the Tridentine decrees, re- 
 leasing one, buying another, and coercing a third. 
 The free cities would accept the decrees only 
 on condition that their own teachers should be 
 heard, and all questions decided by Scripture and 
 primitive tradition. 
 
 Even yet the Pope declined to coerce the se- 
 ceding theologians, and Charles drew up the In- 
 terim, which was much like a pronouncement of 
 Henry VHI. This document, it may be added, 
 was drawn up by two Catholics and one nominal 
 Protestant ; and disputed points of doctrine were 
 decided by a majority vote. The Spanish army 
 enforced the Interim, and Charles approved the 
 truth of its doctrine by the successful siege of 
 Magdeburg under Maurice of Saxony, who in 
 turn became a traitor to his Emperor. Paul III 
 claimed Parma and Piacenza as the property of 
 the See of Rome ; his grandson, Ottavio Farnese, 
 claimed them as his duchy ; Charles claimed them 
 as overlord of Milan, and the Pope would not 
 call the Council till this matter was settled. It 
 was all a question of intrigue. When in turn 
 Charles became impotent, the Council adjourned 
 for two years and did not meet for ten. Cam- 
 paigns in Piedmont and the Netherlands, diets
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 209 
 
 at Augsburg and Worms, intermissions and re- 
 cesses, sessions and postponements, the marriage 
 of a Medici or a Farnese, an alliance with Rome, 
 with Venice, or Henry of England, — all this 
 was bound up with a resistance to Solyman the 
 Sultan, and in the end it is strange that Europe 
 remained Christian at all. 
 
 Nor should we fail to remember that Paul him- 
 self was a very great theologian. His place may 
 be set forth in the following schema : A. Paul. 
 a. Paul the apostle ; h. Saul the theologian. B. 
 Other theologians. In his attempt to convert re- 
 ligion into the terms of logic Paul resorted freely 
 to the methods of those whom I have included 
 in class B. The method of his argument and 
 the temper which he displayed often agreed with 
 theirs. When he had a point to make, he made 
 it in the readiest way. He did not choose to be 
 wise beyond the needs of the case. He would 
 seize any weapon at his hand. Indeed a bad ar- 
 gument is sometimes more effectual than a better 
 and more subtle one, on the principle that a fool 
 is properly answered according to his folly. A 
 coarse jest was his retort upon those who were 
 making such a bother about the necessity for cir- 
 cumcision. A passionate curse he did not disdain : 
 "I have said it before and I repeat it now, if
 
 210 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 any one preach another gospel to you, let him 
 be accursed." His favourite oath, " God is my 
 witness," he bestowed freely ; and " I lie not " 
 was his common protest. In his calmer moments 
 he was quite willing to avail himself of the finest 
 rabbinical quibble. 
 
 Any stick was good enough to beat a Corinth- 
 ian dog, but when Paul came to deal with the 
 Pharisees and Scribes he was obliged to employ 
 weapons of their own choosing. " Thou fool," was 
 the retort upon the objector at Corinth, who asked 
 the perfectly reasonable question : " How are the 
 dead raised up, and with what body do they come ? " 
 This simple method of exegesis would not suffice, 
 if he were to satisfy the subtle theological scepti- 
 cism which was bred in the schools of Jerusalem. 
 He attacked the schoolmen on their own ground 
 and turned against them their own weapons, — 
 haggadic allegory, and rabbinical evasion, sub- 
 terfuge, and quibble. When he would convince 
 them that salvation was not for the Jew alone but 
 also for the Gentile, he was capable of employing 
 a casuistry equal to their own. The passage in the 
 letter to the Galatians is characteristic : " Now 
 to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his 
 seed." From this Paul concludes that " seed " 
 means Christ. If the Jews were meant, the word
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 211 
 
 would have been seeds, though at the same time 
 he was quite well aware that seed is used in the 
 same sense as offspring ; and he founds his whole 
 argument upon the absence of characters which 
 distinguish the singular from the plural form. 
 Hosea had prophesied that God would put away 
 his people and "call it not my people." In defi- 
 ance of the true meaning, Paul interprets " not my 
 people " as the heathen, and finds in prophecy a 
 justification of his mission to the Gentiles. Still 
 more disingenuous is the arraignment of the Jews 
 as the children of the handmaid, and not the 
 children of Sarah, who alone were heirs of the pro- 
 mise. The bond-woman, Hagar, was an Arabian. 
 Mount Sinai is in Arabia. Consequently the law 
 given on Sinai was for the children of the slave, 
 because her marriage with the Patriarch signifies 
 the covenant of Sinai. As a final curiosity of his 
 exegesis, he adopts the humane command, " Thou 
 shalt not muzzle the ox which treadeth out the 
 corn," as a warrant for ministers being supported 
 by their congregations. 
 
 Sir William Ramsay illustrates very well this 
 capacity of Paul for becoming all things to all 
 men, and writing according to the need of the 
 case. The four South Galatian cities were largely 
 Asiatic, and the idea of freedom was new to them.
 
 212 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 It is upon this Idea that Paul insists when he writes 
 to them. In his letter to the Galatians, we are told, 
 he uses the words "free," "freedom," "set free," 
 eleven times in six chapters ; whilst in the sixteen 
 chapters of which the Epistle to the Romans is 
 composed these words occur only seven times ; in 
 the twenty-nine chapters to the Corinthians, eight 
 times ; and only twice in the forty-three chapters 
 of his remaining letters. In Rome liberty was well 
 founded. In the Greek cities of Aryan lands 
 liberty had degenerated into licence, and in writ- 
 ing to them, it is upon order, self-restraint, and 
 contentment that Paul insists. This rabbinical 
 method of reasoning would delight the heart of 
 Paul ; but he would be quick to detect the fallacy 
 in the argument, namely, that the chapters in these 
 letters are not of equal length. It would be so 
 easy for an opponent to arrive at a contrary con- 
 clusion by making a different division of chapters, 
 that the finer method should have been employed 
 of counting the verses, the words, or even the 
 separate characters. 
 
 Shall we then be content to live as the beasts 
 live and die as they die ? That is the fate which 
 the theologians promise us if we do not adopt 
 some one of their various systems. I take leave 
 to deny that this is the only alternative, and am
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 213 
 
 bold enough to affirm that they have not made 
 God any clearer to us. Oa the contrary, they 
 have led us away from Him by the attempt to 
 master the divine reason by human logic. They 
 failed as utterly as those lecherous and quarrel- 
 some knights who were wont to occupy them- 
 selves in the quest of the Holy Grail. The failure 
 would have been worse had the attempt succeeded. 
 Worst of all, they barred the only way by which 
 God may be known. 
 
 There is a great saying of Joubert's : " It is not 
 hard to know God, provided we do not force our- 
 selves to define Him." An older and greater than 
 Joubert has said : " Love God we rather may 
 than either know him or by speech utter him ; and 
 yet had men liefer by knowledge never find that 
 which they seek, than by love possess that thing 
 which also without love were in vain found." A 
 greater than either has said that God may not 
 only be known : He may be seen by the simple 
 device of purity of heart. Not even the theolo- 
 gians can find God by any other method. " Pour 
 savoir ce qu'il est, il faut etre Dieu meme " ; and 
 I do not suppose the theologians think us so sim- 
 ple-minded as to believe that they have fulfilled 
 this hard condition. 
 
 " Men are never so noble or so base as in their
 
 214 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 religion " : Principal Fairbairn writes these words 
 in his introduction to Mr. Jordan's " Compara- 
 tive Study." What he really means by these 
 words, which, as they stand, are false and blas- 
 phemous, is that men are never so noble as in 
 their religion, and base men are never so base as 
 in their theology. Religion never makes a man 
 base, but this statement demonstrates the inca- 
 pacity of the clerical mind to understand the 
 clear distinction between religion and theology. 
 
 It is a task only too congenial to Protestants 
 to expatiate upon the evils which were found in 
 the Catholic church of the olden time. The reason 
 they find them there is because that was the only 
 church in existence. If there had been others, 
 evil would surely have been found in them. 
 When I refer to this aspect of the work which 
 theology, organized and buttressed by ecclesias- 
 ticism, has done for the world, and mention some 
 of its evils, it is to be understood that I have not 
 in mind the church whose Bishop is in Rome, any 
 more than the church in England, or the church 
 in Scotland. I am not thinking of Catholics, or 
 Presbyterians, or Episcopalians, but of organized 
 ecclesiastical systems. "Not as Frenchmen but 
 as heretics," was the inscription which the Span- 
 iards of St. Domingo placed above the massa-
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 215 
 
 cred Huguenot garrison. " Not as Spaniards but 
 as murderers," was the retort of Dominique de 
 Gourges when he so adequately avenged this fine 
 exploit of fanaticism. So I speak not of Chris- 
 tianity but of ecclesiasticism interpenetrated by 
 a lifeless theology. 
 
 One may expend as much mockery as he 
 pleases upon the pretensions of a theological eccle- 
 siasticism organized by a corporation of priests, 
 since it is mockery their pretensions deserve ; 
 he may be forgiven his bitterness of speech by 
 those who reflect upon the evil which it has 
 wrought in the world, and remember those who 
 had in their time cruel mockings and scourging, 
 who were stoned, sawn asunder, slain with the 
 sword, destitute, alEicted, tormented. One who 
 would study the system aright should survey the 
 cross which it erected on Calvary : and he might 
 complete his education in church history by a 
 short visit to the torture-chamber at the Protest- 
 ant Hague, or to the museum at the Catholic Nu- 
 remberg. But worse than all these torturings was 
 the propagation of the belief that it had all to do 
 with religion, and the invention of hell to enforce 
 it. Consequently it was a necessary postulate 
 that humanity is a massa perdltionis, reserved 
 for burning, and liable to the pains of hell tem-
 
 216 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 porarily, if not " for ever." The necessity for 
 adopting a means of prevention is accentuated, 
 and the advantage of any given system is thereby 
 magnified. Men are not so bad as this assump- 
 tion would make them out to be. If God had 
 himself undertaken the search for righteous men 
 in Sodom instead of entrusting the matter to 
 the Patriarch, the results of the enquiry might 
 not have been so disappointing. 
 
 This spirit of persecution is to-day as insepara- 
 ble from ecclesiasticism as ever it was. One need 
 not be a fierce Erastian to believe that it is only 
 a strong state which can keep a church from 
 resorting to physical force. The Baptists are the 
 only denomination of Christians which has never 
 resorted to persecution ; and the late Mr. Spur- 
 geon used to explain the anomaly on the ground 
 that they never got the chance. 
 
 In September, 1907, which is in the twentieth 
 century, the head of the Catholic church issued 
 a syllabus of sixty-five propositions which are 
 described as errors. He denounces as false the 
 idea that the church shall not pass judgement upon 
 the natural sciences. He denounces as false the 
 idea that scientific research has the right to refute 
 the facts which the church holds to be undoubted. 
 It is by such conduct as this that the ecclesiastics
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 217 
 
 have bungled themselves out of every country in 
 Europe, including Scotland. The progress of 
 knowledge will continue and nothing will happen 
 to those who advance it, since we have no longer 
 any regard for the rack and the stake, those two 
 instruments by which in times past divine truth 
 was made to prevail. 
 
 II 
 
 All this having been said, — everything, in 
 short, which can be said of this view of the case, — 
 the matter is by no means settled. Possibly there 
 lurks in it the fallacy of incomplete statement ; 
 and one content with that would justly lay himself 
 open to the charge of being a mocker, a trifler, 
 and more than a semi-liar. It may be that our wit- 
 ness. Cardinal Newman, did not inform us fully. 
 
 Only the other day a more modern and greater 
 than Newman said : " Religion cannot be the cri- 
 terion of scientific truth : each must be criticized 
 by its own principles." A cloud of witnesses over- 
 shadows us : Luther protesting that Jesus is his 
 own master, even if Peter or Paul denied it, 
 and Judas, Pilate, or Herod affirmed it ; Zwingli 
 declaring that " faith does not depend upon the 
 discretion of men, but has its seat invincibly in 
 the soul " ; Calvin attesting that " we must seek
 
 218 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 a ground for conviction in something higher than 
 human reasonings, opinions, or conjectures," and 
 that "assurance has a higher sanction than rea- 
 son, namely, the inward witness of the spirit " ; 
 Lessing affirming that " religion has always been 
 and still is proved by its own virtue " ; and Pas- 
 cal, who sums up all in the inimitable words, " it 
 is the heart which is the judge." In religion, as 
 in mathematics, there is no room for testimony or 
 authority. Each proves itself. That is the com- 
 ment of Auguste Sabatier. Amongst those whom 
 I have cited are certain theologians of repute, 
 Luther, Calvin, Pascal. Possibly the matter is 
 worth investigating further. 
 
 No one would think of accusing Professor Mac- 
 Bride of being a theologian ; and yet he has felt 
 constrained to declare that our relation to the 
 Great Power enormously transcends in impor- 
 tance the structure of molecules, the causes of 
 radio-activity, or even the laws of heredity, mat- 
 ters which science has taken for its very own. The 
 best theological intellect has always concerned 
 itself with that relation, and it has been the keen- 
 est which has ever been applied to human affairs. 
 It realized that its conclusions were provisional. 
 It gave the best explanations it could discover, 
 and had the courage to stand by them as if they
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 219 
 
 were final. The great theologians had an insolu- 
 ble problem to solve, and they attacked it boldly, 
 winning praise or blame according as we consider 
 their failure or their success. In all their writ- 
 ings is an undertone of lamentation that they 
 had failed, and a secret joy that they could not 
 succeed. "If God," said Lessing, who was at 
 once dialectician, rationalist, and mystic, "were 
 to offer me in one hand truth, and in the other the 
 desire for truth, I should say, keep the truth ; it 
 is not suited for me ; leave to me only the power 
 and the desire to seek for it, though I never find 
 it wholly and absolutely." 
 
 And this brings us face to face with Pilate's 
 question, as it is commonly understood, though 
 I am informed by an astute exegetist that the 
 question which that Roman " district officer " 
 really did put to those unscrupulous Orientals was 
 in the contemptuous form: What is truth — to 
 you ? What do you know, or care, about truth ? 
 The answer is, there is no such thing as final 
 truth to which we may attain. There are many 
 separate truths, each one of which is false when 
 it stands in isolation ; but no man has seen the 
 truth at any time and lived. Even the message 
 of Jesus was a partial truth. The only questions 
 which are worth solving: are those which cannot
 
 220 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 be solved, and men will not soon abandon the 
 search for the unsearchable Supreme. 
 
 Even if we were to admit the amazing possi- 
 bility that a man by searching could find all 
 knowledge, it might not necessarily follow that 
 he would be a religious man. Paul provided for 
 the contingency that one might understand all 
 mysteries, and he was entirely contemptuous of 
 the result. In reality, knowledge has nothing to 
 do with religion : it is the intelligence of the heart 
 that judges. Indeed it was to the intellectually 
 ignorant that St. Francis and Wesley appealed, 
 because, having small intellect, theology was no 
 stumbling-block to them; and these two great 
 revivers of religion had themselves little more 
 theology than Jesus had. 
 
 It was in no spirit of cynicism that Kenan 
 counselled : " Let us abandon the search for 
 truth ; we might not like it when we found it." 
 But Newman and the pseudo-scientific theologians 
 seized upon the wisdom of the world and lost 
 their cause. Searching in wells for truth which 
 lies exposed upon the surface, they are like the 
 Woman peering into the empty grave and lament- 
 ing: "They have taken away my Lord, and I 
 know not where they have laid him " ; whilst in 
 reality he was secure in the hearts of men.
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 221 
 
 Prove not; only believe, was the watchword 
 which Celsus gives as the magical formula by 
 which the early Christians triumphed. Paul in- 
 sists continually upon the distinction between the 
 wisdom of the world and the word of God. His 
 demand is to preach this word as foolishness, and 
 avoid the seductions of science, a warning which 
 on many occasions he might well have taken to 
 himself. When the world is rid entirely of this 
 fallacy, the spirit of religion will appeal to men of 
 intellect with its full force. Then will come a new 
 revival of religion ; and it is amongst intellectual 
 men that its operation will be most evident. 
 
 The business of the theologians is a hard one. 
 The essence of their systems lies in the certainty 
 that they have the truth and that their truth Is 
 essential to salvation. The lesser authorities are 
 convinced that such is the case ; the great theo- 
 logians pretend to believe it, but in reality they 
 do not. In this there is a distinction which may 
 help us to an understanding. 
 
 A theologian, like a politician, must assume that 
 his system is right and that all other systems 
 are wrong. The essence of Jewish thought was 
 that salvation was to Israel alone. It was hateful 
 to them that the promise could be to any other. 
 They maintained this ground and saved their
 
 222 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 church, until out of that very church there came 
 in the fulness of time such as Jesus and Paul. 
 They saved it even against their prophets, who 
 were continually objecting to this theory of ex- 
 clusiveness, that salvation followed in descent 
 from Abraham. "Are ye not as Ethiopians to 
 me ? " was the bitter cry of Amos. " God is able 
 of these stones to raise up children," was the 
 contemptuous protest of John the Baptist to Jew- 
 ish pretensions. The charge which they brought 
 against Jesus was blasphemy, because he spoke 
 slightingly of their ecclesiastical organization ; 
 and the cause of their life-long hatred against 
 Paul was that by his apostasy he had destroyed 
 the law. 
 
 This exclusiveness of salvation has been a pos- 
 session of all theological systems. In that com- 
 pendium of doctrine which was put forward as 
 a confession of the faith which was held by the 
 church of Scotland at the time of its publication, 
 one may read : " Men not professing the Chris- 
 tian religion cannot be saved in any other way 
 whatsoever.'' The theory of another church yet in 
 active existence is much more narrow, that there 
 can be no salvation even in a Christian church 
 which does not possess an apostolic succession of 
 priests. I do not suppose that these beliefs are in
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 223 
 
 reality held by a very large number of persons 
 in these two churches. At any rate I do not hold 
 the one ; and Dr. Symonds informs me that he 
 does not hold the other. 
 
 It was because Peter " dissembled" upon this 
 question that Paul, speaking as the Apostle and 
 not as the Rabbi, " withstood him to the face," 
 and pronounced that man or angel accursed who 
 preached any other doctrine than that of free 
 salvation to Jew and Gentile alike. With our 
 humanitarian notions we must make some provi- 
 sion for the heathen and for persons who adhere to 
 other systems of belief than our own. Paul saw 
 a way out of the difficulty, and he gives us some 
 inkling of it in his letter to the Romans. To him 
 there was no reality but God. All else is illusion. 
 In the beginning men acquired some faint per- 
 ception of the knowledge of God, " the invisible 
 things being understood by the things that are 
 made." But their foolish heart was darkened, 
 and professing themselves to be wise they became 
 fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible 
 God into an image like a man, and to birds, and 
 four-footed beasts, and creeping things. As a 
 result they fell into a most deplorable condi- 
 tion, which Paul describes with uncompromising 
 fidelity ; and, in view of what we know of the
 
 224 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 partial loveliness of domestic heathen life, with 
 grotesque exaggeration. But men are never so 
 utterly left to themselves that they are absolutely 
 incapable of perceiving the truth and cleaving 
 to that which is good. The law was revealed to 
 the Jews, who will be judged by it, and either 
 justified or condemned. The heathen have a law 
 written in their hearts, and they will be judged 
 accordingly, " their conscience also bearing wit- 
 ness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing 
 or else excusing one another." 
 
 In Paul's first address to the Galatians as 
 recorded in the Acts there is an example of 
 the unconscious working of his mind upon this 
 theory of exclusive salvation. The audience was 
 a mixed one, composed of Jews and serious- 
 minded Gentiles. In the outset he distinguishes 
 his hearers as Men of Israel, and ye that fear God. 
 As he proceeds, he becomes still more courteous : 
 Men, brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, 
 and whosoever among you feareth God, to you is 
 the word of this salvation sent. Finally all dis- 
 tinction between Jew and Gentile disappears and 
 he addresses them as Men, brethren. And when, 
 long afterwards, he has occasion to write to these 
 "foolish Galatians," he makes the great pro- 
 nouncement : For ye are all the children of God.
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 225 
 
 There is neither Jew nor Greek. Ye are all one 
 in Christ Jesus. 
 
 It is the fashion to say that belief has nothing 
 to do with religion ; that religion is an affair of 
 the emotions, of that part of the nature which lies 
 below the surface and beyond the range of that 
 consciousness which deals with the common affairs 
 of life. Yet one must admit that belief has some- 
 thing to do with conduct, and no one will deny 
 that in some way conduct and religion have some- 
 thing to do with each other. Even the law courts 
 proceed upon the assumption that if a man really 
 entertains the belief that he is about to die, his 
 conduct will be altered to such an extent that he 
 will be likely to tell the truth about any proper 
 matter that may be put to him. In less extreme 
 cases it is assumed that he will testify truly if he 
 believes that false swearing will render him liable 
 to the pains of hell for ever. 
 
 Religion, in truth, is an affair of the whole man, 
 and the difference between the religious and the 
 irreligious man is that the one thinks of God, the 
 other is concerned with this world alone. The es- 
 sence of religion is the conscious adjustment of 
 conduct to the divine will. The identification of 
 that will with morality is the foundation of ethics. 
 In this lies the distinction between the two. The
 
 226 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 one is the business of the individual in his own 
 life ; the other is the business of a professor in 
 his chair. A man who reflects upon the matter at 
 all inevitably arrives at the conclusion that he 
 is merely a part of a whole which lies outside of 
 the region of his knowledge. This very reflection 
 and consciousness implies a theory of that which 
 lies beyond, of the future in this life at least, 
 and in normal cases of a life which may follow 
 that, — in a word, of God. 
 
 A man who feels at all feels himself to be a 
 part of a whole which lies beyond the realm of 
 his knowledge. The lowest savage feels that, and 
 makes for himself some kind of theory of that 
 which lies beyond. Such a system of conceptions 
 is a theology. The feeling is a fact. Theology is 
 an explanation of it, but the theology which is 
 ample for the savage will not suffice for us. Our 
 feeling is finer and we require a finer explanation. 
 To one who affirms that there is no such thing as 
 feeling, I can do no better than apply the Pauline 
 argument contained in the words : " thou fool." 
 To one who confesses that he himself is insensible 
 to religious feeling I offer a new argument : " thou 
 beast " ; for it is in this alone that a man has his 
 chief preeminence over the beasts which perish. 
 If he perish, that is enough. If there is some
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 227 
 
 arrangement by which he may be saved as by fire, 
 that also is well. 
 
 As men grow, they outgrow their system, but 
 the human need for a system remains. More espe- 
 cially must those feeble and imperfectly developed 
 natures which constitute the bulk of humanity 
 have a theology and a church to lean upon. Pos- 
 sibly those who have eaten of the tree of know- 
 ledge and are become as gods can do without. 
 Those who have followed the recent controversy 
 upon this subject will be inclined to lay some stress 
 upon the testimony of George Tyrrell. He was an 
 immediate sufferer from an oro^anized theologrical 
 system, and yet he declared that religion without 
 at least an implicit theology is like a man with- 
 out a brain, a bundle of sentiments, and blind 
 impulses, and senseless contortions. 
 
 When Jesus died he left on earth a few friends 
 who were enthusiastic over his teaching and were 
 devoted to his person. They had faith in him ; 
 that is, they entertained for him a sentiment 
 which may best be described as hero-worship. But 
 from the scene of his death they had fled in con- 
 sternation. The piteous account of the denial, and 
 the bitter weeping of the disciple when his base- 
 ness was revealed to him, is more credible than 
 the comforting legend of the women standing by
 
 228 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 the cross in the friendly company of that dis- 
 ciple whom Jesus loved above all others. 
 
 In so far as they could judge, the theologians 
 had repelled the attack of Jesus upon their posi- 
 tion. They had every reason to believe that the 
 sect of the Nazarene would disappear as the sect 
 of the Baptist had disappeared in the chaos of 
 Jewish aspiration ; and in the light of after-events 
 we cannot affirm that the expectation was without 
 warrant. The Baptist had been described as more 
 than a prophet, as greatest among them that are 
 born of a wcfman. He, like Jesus, had set himself 
 up against the organized nonsense with which 
 the Scribes had kept the people in bondage. He 
 demanded individual repentance and not priestly 
 intercession for the remission of sins. By this 
 direct approach to God he made the office of 
 the hierarchy of no effect ; and yet all the direct 
 result of his work that remained was a small com- 
 munity of pious Jews, which lived in asceticism 
 for a brief period and vanished into the cold void 
 of history. 
 
 Jewish Christianity fared little better. It never 
 obtained a footing in Asiatic soil. The church at 
 Antioch was the only one of considerable size in 
 Syria, and it was largely Gentile. The country 
 districts and villages were unmoved by the new
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 229 
 
 doctrine, and the Christianity of Palestine finally 
 perished in the catastrophe of Jerusalem. The 
 only possible exception was the church in Edessa 
 in the Euphrates valley, of which Mr. Burkitt 
 writes so informingly, where an orthodox Chris- 
 tianity grew up, and exercised an influence — not 
 a very good influence, it is true — as far as Eng- 
 land, and as late as the seventh century. But this 
 church in its origin and growth was entirely inde- 
 pendent of the community in Jerusalem, and can- 
 not be credited to the activity of the immediate 
 disciples of Jesus. Its claim to authority was based 
 upon a plausible letter dictated by Jesus to Han- 
 nan, a notary, for his employer Abgar the Black, 
 as is recorded in the " Doctrine of Addai." This 
 letter was accepted as genuine for nearly five hun- 
 dred years, when it was branded as apocryphal 
 by Gelasius, that Bishop of Rome who strove to 
 heal the schism between the eastern and western 
 churches, after he had secured for his office com- 
 plete independence of emperor and council in 
 matters of faith. Yet the letter was copied and 
 circulated in England for two hundred years 
 longer, and was worn as a charm " against light- 
 ning and hail, and perils by sea and by land, by 
 day and by night, and in dark places." 
 
 The literary treatment which this document
 
 230 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 received is interesting; and one may speak plainly 
 of a letter which is condemned by authority, 
 who would be barred from a free handling of an 
 epistle contained within the canon. The conclu- 
 sion puts into the mouth of Jesus the words, " No 
 enemy shall have dominion over thy city." A cen- 
 tury later the city of Edessa was sacked by the 
 Romans, and the province in which it was situated 
 was incorporated into the Empire. When Euse- 
 bius, in the light of subsequent events, came to 
 treat of this letter which Jesus is alleged to have 
 written, he was driven to one of two conclusions, 
 either that the document was spurious, or that 
 Jesus was mistaken. 
 
 This essential father of church history adopted 
 neither one of these alternatives. He suppressed 
 the damaging conclusion, and accepted the let- 
 ter as genuine. Even if we admit the influence 
 which these Syrian communities exercised over the 
 imagination of the prophet of Islam and upon the 
 development of Mohammedanism, we must also 
 admit that such influence as they exercised was 
 Jewish rather than Christian. Indeed a full ad- 
 mission of this claim would imply that Jewish 
 Christianity had entirely disappeared from Israel. 
 
 The early apostles had two main lines of con- 
 duct open to them. The one was to preserve the
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 231 
 
 entliuslasm which was inspired by the person of 
 Jesus. The other was to create an organization 
 through which it might be propagated. In effect 
 these two courses coincided. Enthusiasm unre- 
 strained breaks forth into wild fancy. Confined, 
 it is apt to precipitate as a stiff residue which 
 eventually loses itself in the wrappings which 
 surround it. Their whole labour was an attempt 
 to give form to this enthusiasm, to secure it here 
 and there with a point of intellectual belief, and 
 by regulation to restrain it within the bounds of 
 decency and order. That was the single aim of 
 their theology, liturgy, and government. 
 
 The history of all religious movements at their 
 inception, before they have had time to organize 
 themselves, is one of wild disorder. Taking Paul 
 at his own word, when he rebukes the early 
 Christians, we can partially excuse the heathen 
 who looked upon them as a company of madmen. 
 Early Methodism is full of occurrences from 
 which one would be liable to draw a similar 
 deduction. In a book which " The Spectator " 
 describes as " honest, accurate, and painstaking," 
 there is an account of a meeting of twenty-five 
 thousand persons, who behaved themselves in such 
 a way that " the noise was like the roar of Niag- 
 ara." It is just at this point that the theologian
 
 232 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 comes upon the scene. Wesley gave to the Meth- 
 odists an organization ; and if Paul had not ap- 
 peared when the hearts of men burned within 
 them, we should now be employing the words 
 which Anatole France in "Le Procurateur de 
 Judee "• puts into the mouth of Pilate : " Jesus ? 
 I do not recall the name." The scepticism of 
 *' Philopatris " would be ours : " And to me it 
 seems that you have fallen asleep upon a white 
 rock in a parish of dreams and have dreamt all 
 this in a moment while it was yet night." 
 
 It is easy for those who are filled with the spirit 
 to deride the humble labour of those who would 
 confine it to some relation with conduct in this 
 world. There is no task so thankless as the sup- 
 pression of ecstasy in others, although it involves 
 self-denial of that luxury in the individual who 
 undertakes it. Especially hard must this repres- 
 sion have been for Paul. He thanked God that 
 he could speak with tongues more than they all ; 
 yet he would rather speak five words with his 
 understanding than ten thousand words in an un- 
 known tongue. Certainly he was easily first in his 
 capacity to see visions. Apart from the great event 
 on the way to Damascus, he had visions in the 
 supreme moments of his life. He undertook his 
 great mission in response to the cry of that Mace-
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 233 
 
 dqnian whom he saw in a vision at Troas, " Come 
 over and help us." His second visit to Jerusalem 
 was the result of a revelation. He protests con- 
 tinually that it was not from man that he had re- 
 ceived his message, that no man had taught him, 
 and that it was not with flesh and blood he had 
 conferred. Yet he deliberately makes light of 
 these experiences in his splendid exaltation of the 
 virtue of love ; declaring that, in comparison with 
 it, speaking with tongues, proj^hesying, and other 
 ecstatic manifestations were nothing better than 
 the clanging of those cymbals which the Cor- 
 inthians were accustomed to hear in the heathen 
 worship. For fourteen years he was without the 
 spiritual elevation to the third heaven which he 
 had once before experienced ; and yet those were 
 the years in which he strove with sane, sober, and 
 serious thought, with clear, decisive utterance, 
 with manly labour and heroic courage, to develop 
 the character of his converts and organize them 
 into a community which had some semblance to 
 a well-ordered church. 
 
 Whether we like it or not, Christianity has been 
 preserved to us by the theological genius of Paul 
 and of his companions, many of whom are un- 
 known even as to their names. Evidence of their 
 skill and their art lies on every page of their
 
 234 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 writings. One example will serve to illustrate 
 tiieir capacity for dealing with an exegetical ne- 
 cessity, not that it is the best, but because it is 
 best known. The community of Christians was 
 without any body of doctrine, without organiza- 
 tion, without a liturgy even, excepting the form 
 of prayer which Jesus is reported to have taught 
 to his disciples. AYe cannot too often remind our- 
 selves of that warning which was addressed by 
 Bishop Selborne to the divines who had assem- 
 bled at Westminster for the purpose of fixing for 
 all time the true confession of faith, that the 
 Scriptures were not written in English for our 
 specific requirements. 
 
 The words of Jesus are at best a translation 
 from the language which he employed, and the 
 translator, in attempting to convey his meaning, 
 would be influenced unconsciously by his own 
 predilections and consciously by the needs of the 
 case. Luke in writing his form of this prayer 
 evidently had in mind the manna with which the 
 children of Israel were fed, and he translated 
 food as " daily bread " to imply a eucharistic 
 function. This prayer in the earliest liturgy was 
 used morning, noon, and night. At night there 
 was no necessity of praying for the bread of the 
 day which was already gone, and the form was
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 235 
 
 enlarged to include the bread which would be 
 required for to-morrow, and day by day after 
 that. With the tendency of all religions to dema- 
 terialize common things, this to-morrow was pro- 
 jected into the future, and the food became a 
 supernatural bread. In time a section of the 
 church abandoned the analogy with manna, and 
 in the desire to associate Christianity with at 
 least the forms of Judaism, substituted for it an 
 analogy with the shew-bread which was always 
 exposed to view ; and so the phrase " continual 
 bread " was born. 
 
 Under the influence of the same desire and of 
 that passionate longing for the return of the 
 Messiah, the expression contained in the original 
 words, as they probably stood, " Deliver us from 
 evil, for this is thy Kingdom," was transformed 
 into " Thy Kingdom come." The Jewish doxo- 
 logy was added, and the finished exegetical pro- 
 duct was substituted in the Christian service for 
 the " Eighteen Prayer " of the synagogues. This 
 was followed by a reading of Scripture, by a ser- 
 mon, and by a concluding prayer, precisely as 
 was the custom amongst the Jews. In the church 
 of Scotland to this day an order of service is 
 observed at every diet of worship which differs 
 but slightly from this, — a matter upon which
 
 236 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 happily I am capable of offering expert evidence ; 
 and I am informed that a somewhat similar prac- 
 tice prevails in all churches of the Dissent ex- 
 cepting in the Church of England. 
 
 Other essentially Jewish observances were 
 added, with slight alteration, and so an order of 
 service was created. Fasting was practised on 
 Wednesdays and Fridays instead of, as previ- 
 ously, on Mondays and Thursdays, " so as to be 
 distinguished from the hypocrites " ; but it would 
 appear that abstinence from food did not imply 
 humiliation in the sight of God. The device was 
 employed rather for the physiological reason that 
 hunger is a quickener of the senses, and makes 
 them more receptive of any revelation which is 
 about to be vouchsafed. No price was too great 
 to pay for this precious gift. It was a sign of the 
 spirit, and conferred great authority upon the 
 possessor. The contrary practice was also em- 
 ployed as soon as it was discovered that a surfeit 
 of food and drink would free the mind from self- 
 control, and allow the spirit to enter in and 
 assume full possession. A prophet of the Greek 
 church more recently attained to an extreme 
 degree of ecstasy by this method. When he de- 
 sired a revelation he would break the large bones 
 of a dead bear with a heavy club, and extract the
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 237 
 
 marrow. After eating freely of the delicacy, he 
 would lie down to sleep, and when he arose he 
 would report that he had seen marvellous things. 
 
 When a man protests that he has had a reve- 
 lation it is easy to contradict him ; it is hard to 
 disprove his allegations, as the more sober-minded 
 of the apostles were not slow to discover. Itin- 
 erant preachers were coming into the scattered 
 communities, appealing for support on the ground 
 that they were possessed by the spirit, and offer- 
 ing these revelations as warrant of authority. 
 These wanderers must be kept in order by the 
 "president," as the overseer of the meeting is 
 described by Paul in his earlier letters. It was 
 his business to provide a place of assembly, to 
 regulate the service, and to take charge of any 
 gifts which might be made for distribution 
 amongst the poor. Nothing could be more natural 
 and simple ; but the arrangement was inefficient, 
 since these wandering teachers and prophets were 
 yet free to expound the word according to their 
 own interpretation, and appealing to the people 
 set the authority of the overseer at defiance. 
 
 A closer supervision was necessary, and before 
 his death Paul was writing to the Philippians 
 with entire approval of the two orders of over- 
 seers which had grown up — the bishops and
 
 238 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 the deacons — amongst the saints. As yet there 
 was no election of these officials. They took 
 their place by virtue of a natural endowment for 
 keeping order. But at the time when the Acts 
 was written, these officers had become organized 
 into presbyteral colleges, with presidents who 
 bore the titles indifferently of overseers, shep- 
 herds, leaders, elders, with a subsidiary class of 
 ministers or helpers, whose functions were dis- 
 ciplinary and social rather than spiritual and 
 hortative. The teachers were there for that pur- 
 pose. 
 
 But eventually the overseer had a wider diver- 
 sity of duties. A corresponding range of qualifi- 
 cations was demanded of him, as is recorded in 
 the first letter to Timothy. He must be a man of 
 blameless domestic life, exercising a good disci- 
 pline at home, hospitable, and of good report. In 
 addition to these virtues he must be apt to teach. 
 So important a function could no longer be left 
 in the hands of irresponsible persons. The apos- 
 tolic tradition of sound doctrine must be main- 
 tained by due authority in face of the rising power 
 of Gnosticism. The office of the bishop is mag- 
 nified, and, if he teach in addition to his other 
 duties, he is to have a double reward. But there 
 must be some guarantee that his teaching is
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 239 
 
 sound, and that can be assured only by assigning 
 to him the possession of the spirit, " through tho 
 laying on of hands." When Paul speaks of a gift 
 it is this which he means, and the " good de- 
 posit " remains, not with heretical teachers, not 
 even with the congregation, but with the officials. 
 This division into a laity and a clergy, with vary- 
 ing degrees of dignity, was helped by a remem- 
 brance of the clear distinction between the priest- 
 hood and the people in the Jewish system ; and 
 the idea of an apostolic succession was familiar 
 to minds which were saturated with the preroga- 
 tives of the House of Aaron. 
 
 There is some evidence, however, that the 
 change from the old simplicity and freedom of 
 service to a fixed organization and a paid episco- 
 pate was not received with complete acquiescence 
 by the people, or even by so staunch an upholder 
 of institutions as the writer of the Acts. To 
 him the itinerant preachers wei-e grievous wolves ; 
 the bishops should avoid their practices, and 
 rather follow the example of Paul, who laboured 
 for his living at the humble occupation of tent- 
 making. The itinerants, as we may readily sur- 
 mise, were not wholly submissive to the new order. 
 Indeed there is specific evidence in the bitter 
 cry of that elder who indites to Gaius the Third
 
 240 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 Epistle of John : " I wrote unto the church : but 
 Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence, 
 receiveth us not. Wherefore, if I come, I will 
 remember his deeds which he doeth, prating 
 against us with malicious words : and not content 
 therewith, neither doth he himself receive the 
 brethren, and forbiddeth them that would, and 
 casteth them out of the church." 
 
 These itinerant preachers indulged in fanatical 
 insubordination. Elders required to be warned 
 against drunkenness, coarseness, and impurity in 
 their own households. Indeed some proselytes 
 who had been made bishops " fell into the con- 
 demnation of the devil." The young women dis- 
 played a love of dress and finery. They were 
 notorious gossips, and Titus felt bound to warn 
 the older women against the vice of drink. He 
 implied, too, that the excellent virtue of chas- 
 tity did not in itself atone for the absence of all 
 others. St. James devotes a whole epistle to the 
 rich Christians who blaspheme the name, doing 
 violence to the poorer brethren, dragging them 
 before the tribunals, and keeping back the wages 
 of the labourers. Christian slaves robbed their 
 masters, and amongst them there was not even 
 the most rudimentary morality. Documents such 
 as the Epistle of James and the " Shepherd of
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 241 
 
 Hermas " give one a terrible idea of the moral and 
 religious level of many congregations. It was as if 
 the gospel had lost its power through its alliance 
 with the world. 
 
 Order was restored, and none too soon. In vain 
 the people had been warned that " not everyone 
 who speaks in ecstasy is a prophet, but only he 
 who at the same time walketh in the way of the 
 Lord." By their fruits ye shall know them ; by 
 his deeds shall the true prophet be distinguished 
 from the false, they were told ; and they were 
 recommended to test the man who claimed to 
 have the spirit, by his life ; these were the false 
 prophets that came in sheep's clothing, creeping 
 into houses, and captivating the women. They 
 had converted the teaching of Jesus into sophis- 
 try, and made of his great works a system of 
 magic. Even during the lifetime of Paul, the 
 Lord's Supper had been transformed into a sense- 
 less orgy. At Corinth, as he tells us, the rich 
 would not wait for the slaves and the poor. To 
 the sin of pride they added the vice of gluttony, 
 with the result that the poor went away " hungry 
 and weak," whilst the rich remained in a drunken 
 stupor. 
 
 Most prophets have always been false prophets, 
 speaking great swelling words of vanity, sporting
 
 242 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 themselves with their own deceivings, and with 
 feigned words making merchandise of the people. 
 It is the desire of the people that their prophets 
 shall smooth their tongues and say, He saith. 
 They say to their seers, See not ; and to the pro- 
 phets. Prophesy not unto us right things, but 
 smooth things, deceits and words which are 
 smoother than butter. In the traditional home 
 of prophecy, Ahab found four hundred false 
 prophets in one place on the same day, whom he 
 might much better have put to death. 
 
 The prophet and the priest are inevitable ene- 
 mies ; and yet, without the priest the prophet 
 ends as a voice crying in the wilderness. It is 
 the strangest paradox of history that religion 
 loses itself without the church, and its fineness is 
 always destroyed within. The priest slays the 
 prophet and betrays the church ; yet he maintains 
 its existence until the saint is ready to redeem it. 
 When religion is driven from the hearts of men, 
 its only refuge is the church until the time comes, 
 as it inevitably does, for it to burst forth like a 
 water-spring long pent up. When we realize that 
 it is one function of the priest to slay the prophet, 
 we can regard with more equanimity the methods 
 which he adopts. 
 
 Occasionally a mistake is made, but the priests
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 243 
 
 are always willing to make what amends they can 
 by building a handsome sepulchre. 
 
 ni 
 
 A criticism which is content with an exposition 
 of the polemical force and apologetic direction of 
 the Gospels and Epistles proceeds from an igno- 
 rant, perverse, and unbelieving mind. Polemic 
 and apologetic loom large in the writings of Paul, 
 because these were the things with which he was 
 immediately concerned. He was not writing for 
 us ; still less did he intend that his letters should 
 form the chapters of a book. He was merely 
 dealing in a summary way with particular cases 
 which had arisen, and all that has come down 
 to us of his writings can be contained in twenty 
 or thirty moderate-sized pages of print. To be 
 strictly accurate, he did not write : he merely dic- 
 tated his letters, excepting that to the Galatians, 
 when in anxiety and anger he seized the pen, and 
 issued a genuine product of his turbulent mind ; 
 in the end, however, apologizing so winsomely for 
 the large characters which he was obliged to em- 
 ploy, after the manner of a child or one half-blind. 
 This South Galatian church was composed of 
 Jews, proselytes, and Gentiles, and all were very 
 dear to him. If it had been possible, they would
 
 244 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 have plucked out their own eyes and given them 
 to him. Yet after he had left, there was a deliberate 
 attempt to reinstate Jewish ideas and practices in 
 his church. He was traduced as one who was no 
 Apostle, who had received no authority, as one 
 who was setting aside the laws of God in showing 
 to the people a shorter way, and by declaring 
 the futility of Jewish rites and ordinances. He 
 defends himself with a fine boldness, arguing, 
 appealing, even cursing the disciples who had 
 walked with Jesus. Finally, he sums up his mes- 
 sage, which is as valid for us as for the Galatians, 
 that the essence of religion rests in the individual 
 life, and not in rite or ceremonial. 
 
 The first letter to the Corinthians deals with 
 an entirely different state of affairs. The commu- 
 nity which Paul had founded three years before 
 became engaged in difficulties and wrote to him. 
 Factions had arisen. The Jews were at work 
 again, protesting that a Pagan must become a 
 Jew on his way to Christianity. The Greeks hav- 
 ing observed that no ill effects followed casting 
 off the Levitical law, cast off the moral law as 
 well. A third party was engaged in the vain at- 
 tempt to rationalize the Hebrew Scriptures with 
 Greek philosophy; and lastly there were those 
 who disdained all teaching, and strove for an im-
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 245 
 
 mediate and mystical union with God, To these 
 warring factions Paul writes that there is only- 
 one basis of agreement, loyalty to Jesus, and 
 cooperation in his service. 
 
 The immediate motive for writing the Second 
 Epistle to the Corinthians was extremely simple. 
 It was reported commonly that there was in the 
 church a most infamous fellow, who was guilty of 
 immorality so gross that it was not even named 
 amongst the Gentiles. Paul in his first letter 
 adjured them in the name and by the power of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ to deliver him unto Satan for 
 the destruction of his flesh. Instead of adopting 
 so radical a measure, the church-meeting merely 
 decided to reprimand this wicked person ; and it 
 would even appear that the decision was not an 
 unanimous one. Paul writes to signify his assent, 
 and urges them to comfort the erring brother lest 
 perhaps he should be swallowed up with overmuch 
 sorrow. At the same time he takes occasion to say 
 some plain things about his former friends who 
 had forged letters against him. 
 
 The Epistles to the Ephesians and to the Co- 
 lossians are pamphlets against Gnosticism, and 
 are more critical of that than expository of Chris- 
 tianity. The letter to Philemon is a short note 
 about a slave-boy. The Philippians had sent to
 
 246 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 the Apostle, who was then a prisoner at Eome, 
 certain articles for his comfort, and he acknow- 
 ledged the gift in a letter of thanks, — a letter, 
 it may be added, the like of which for loveliness, 
 poignancy, richness, and grace, never issued from 
 another heart. 
 
 The doctrine of Paul as set forth in these let- 
 ters to the Romans, the Galatians, the Corinth- 
 ians, the Ephesians, the Philippians, — not to 
 mention the short note to Philemon, which best 
 of all illustrates the humanity, the humour even 
 of the Apostle, for it is in a distinctly humorous 
 vein that he induces the Christian to receive back 
 his slave-boy who has run away, — is indefinite 
 and obscure, because it was indefinite and ob- 
 scure in his own mind ; it is only in the letters 
 which were written by his followers in amplifi- 
 cation of his doctrine that the full results are 
 observed ; and in so far as they are extreme, they 
 are baneful. 
 
 Paul was a man of plain speech. He rebuked 
 sin wherever he found it, and he did not hesitate to 
 name and describe the sins which he rebuked. He 
 devotes a chapter to a catalogue of the vices which 
 were common in Rome, amongst the heathen ; and 
 he leaves us in no doubt about the practices which 
 were prevalent in the church at Corinth, — men
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 247 
 
 and women living, or attempting to live, in utter 
 defiance of the claims of nature, and violating all 
 the principles of consanguinity. As a result we 
 are inclined to think of these practices as being 
 the rule rather than the occasional exception, and 
 we are blind to the virtues which did blossom in 
 that heathen environment. 
 
 Above all we fail to understand that nearly 
 every individual in the community did possess a 
 personal experience of living in an especial rela- 
 tion with God, which was much more precious than 
 that which came from a punctilious observance of 
 the formal commands of Jesus. There was an inner 
 union in the spirit of God, and the whole life 
 was pervaded by that spirit whose fruit was love, 
 joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, 
 faith, meekness, temperance. In short, this spirit 
 proved itself not by ecstasies, prophesying, and 
 speaking with tongues, but by holiness and love, 
 leading a life of purity in brotherly fellowship. To 
 do the will of God and present themselves blame- 
 less was the first charge upon the members of the 
 Christian community. In this was embraced the 
 whole range of moral action. Whatsoever things 
 are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatso- 
 ever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
 whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things
 
 248 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 are of good report, — these were the things upon 
 which they were to think, because there was vir- 
 tue in them, and praise to those who made them 
 their own. Above all, the Christian converts were 
 to shine as lights in the world, blameless and 
 harmless in the midst of a perverse and rebellious 
 generation. They were to be unspotted from the 
 world, holy as God was holy, pure as Jesus was, 
 and as temples of the spirit of God they were 
 to keep their bodies a fit dwelling-place for that 
 spirit. Morality was not an abstract quality, but 
 a goal to be attained at the cost of much labour 
 and sweat. 
 
 If the Jews were to be refuted, It must be out 
 of their own mouths, and Paul appealed to their 
 writings. In them he discovered weapons for an 
 attack upon the fundamental position of the Jew- 
 ish religion. The Hebrew demand : By what means 
 shall a man be justified ? is in reality a less ecs- 
 tatic form of the Christian cry : What must I 
 do to be saved ? Justification to Paul, as well as 
 to the Jews, was a simple realit}'-, and not, as it 
 has become to us by reason of much exposition, an 
 unintelligible formula. The word merely means 
 to declare innocent, the exact opposite of to de- 
 clare guilty. God is Imagined as keeping a book 
 in which every man has an account, with his good
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 249 
 
 deeds recorded on one side and the bad on the 
 other. As each act is performed, judgement is 
 passed upon it whether it be good or evil, and it 
 is written down accordingly ; but the final sum- 
 ming up is postponed till the last day, when the 
 book of life will be opened, and the dead judged 
 out of those things which were written according 
 to their works. There are varying accounts of this 
 system of book-keeping; but in the main they 
 agree that something will happen to those who 
 are on the wrong side. The extreme view that 
 they will be cast into a lake of fire is a late and 
 picturesque invention. 
 
 The Jewish answer was that a man is justified 
 if he keeps the law ; Paul declared that a man is 
 justified by faith. That was his great doctrine, that 
 justification by faith took the place of justification 
 by the law, in virtue of a certain event which had 
 recently happened, namely the death of Jesus. But 
 Paul was obliged, or, what comes to the same thing, 
 thought he was obliged, to find authority for this 
 doctrine in the Hebrew books. He found the war- 
 rant he required in the saying of a minor prophet : 
 "The just shall live by faith"; and in Genesis: 
 " Abram believed and it was counted to him for 
 righteousness." This was a daring attempt to fore- 
 stall the law by four hundred and thirty years, —
 
 250 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 a length of time which was believed to have elapsed 
 between the death of the Patriarch and the pro- 
 mulgation of the code. When the Rabbis pro- 
 tested that the exegesis of Paul was fallacious, he 
 made the obvious retort, that the " veil of Moses 
 lay upon their hearts," and obscured from them 
 the real meaning of what they had read. 
 
 Eventually the term came to mean forgiveness ; 
 and the new idea which Paul introduced was that 
 this forgiveness took place upon entrance into the 
 Christian community, here and now, and was not 
 dependent upon an uncertain award in the indefi- 
 nite future. The transaction was an act of grace 
 on the part of God. The Jew was justified because 
 his conduct was above the average. The Christian 
 was justified because he was forgiven, no matter 
 what his conduct might have been. But he was 
 justified by reason of his faith in Jesus; namely, 
 his belief that he was the Messiah, that he died, 
 and rose again. He was justified in virtue of his 
 belief in the creed of the new church rather than 
 of his practice of the observances of the old which 
 was now become the synagogue of Satan. Faith, 
 even in Paul's mind, became not an absolute 
 trust in God's mercy, but an acceptation of the 
 fact that Jesus rose from the dead. Instead of 
 the synagogue the Apostle supplied a church, and
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 251 
 
 inevitably obscured the light of Jesus, which re- 
 vealed to men that God is our Father. The next 
 business was to attack the Jews on the practical 
 side, that is, the performance of sacrificial rites. 
 
 The theory of the sacrifice is the most compli- 
 cated in all theology. It aims to give a consistent 
 account of religious practice, throughout the whole 
 experience of the race. At the one extreme we 
 may observe the figure of the aged Patriarch, the 
 wood laid in order upon the altar, his son bound 
 thereon, the knife uplifted for the sacrifice, and 
 the ram caught in a thicket by his horns to insti- 
 tute the vicarious idea. At the other extreme, as 
 one may witness any Sabbath morning, is the 
 minister of a country congregation, standing in 
 the midst, with the full glare of the sun upon the 
 whitened walls, as with closed eyes and open 
 mouth he offers up the sacrifice of prayer. Be- 
 tween the two extremes is the priest who lifts 
 up the Mass which by some divine thaumaturgy 
 has been transmuted into flesh and blood; near 
 to him is the man who calls himself a priest, and 
 offers up supersubstantial bread. In the heathen 
 and Hebrew performance of the rite something 
 happened to the victim. He was slain and the 
 smoke of his burning ascended a certain way up 
 to heaven. In the Catholic church it is believed
 
 252 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 that something happens, in proof of which the 
 altar is censed to remove the odour which it is 
 assumed has been created in the process. In one 
 division of the Protestant church it is pretended 
 that something happens ; in others there is a frank 
 abandonment of all pretence, without abandon- 
 ment, save in the case of the Society of Friends, 
 of a practice which is merely ceremonial and per- 
 functory. 
 
 All systems of religion begin with the senti- 
 ment of fear, — fear of those mysterious powers 
 which employ the wind, the sea, and the light- 
 ning as their weapons against a puny and helpless 
 race of men. If there is a moment of sunshine 
 and calm, it is only a temporary cessation of the 
 torment. Humanity is a Caliban in Prospero's 
 power. No price is too great to offer for relief, — 
 the choicest of the flock, the first fruits of the 
 earth ; and, if these will not suffice, that most pre- 
 cious of all offerings, the eldest born of the family. 
 Sacrifice was the expression of fear, and in the 
 end came to mean religion. As men gained experi- 
 ence of life their fear diminished, and their sacri- 
 fices became less gross. Traces of this f earf ulness 
 still exist in the most unexpected places. When 
 we pray, " Hallowed be thy name," we are merely 
 assenting to the command, " Thou shalt not take
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 253 
 
 the name of the Lord thy God in vain " ; con- 
 forming, in some degree, with the Jewish custom 
 of naming the holy name not more than once a 
 year, and with the heathen custom of refraining 
 entirely from mention of the household gods. 
 That is the fundamental objection to what is now 
 technically known as profanity. 
 
 An increased perception of the heinousness of 
 sin comes in the progress of the moral develop- 
 ment of the race. To the wandering Israelites it 
 was an easy matter to rid themselves of this 
 burden under which humanity lies. They cast it 
 upon the back of a goat and drove the beast into 
 the wilderness. This trivial device might do very 
 well for a simple-minded, pastoral people. It was 
 too transparent for intelligent Hebrews in the 
 first century. Not aU the blood of beasts on Jew- 
 ish or Hellenic altars slain could take away the 
 guilt of sin. A better means was needed in Paul's 
 time, even the blood of Jesus, the lamb without 
 spot or blemish, though it is only comparatively 
 late that the efficacy of the blood of Jesus is in- 
 sisted on. The three earlier Gospels make no 
 mention of any blood being shed at his death. It 
 is only in the Fourth Gospel that the want is sup- 
 plied by a relation of the incident of the spear- 
 thrust. To us the idea is repugnant that sin can
 
 254 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 be atoned for by sacrifice. We revert rather to 
 the view of Isaiah, that not sacrifice is required, 
 nor the blood of goats, but mercy, loving-kind- 
 ness, and righteousness. 
 
 Paul did not fail to see that he vitiated his 
 own theory of the absolute and only efficacy of 
 the sacrifice of Jesus, by affirming that salvation 
 was accessible on other terms before that event 
 had occurred. This was remedied by nothing less 
 than conveying the message to the dead. Descent 
 into the underworld presented no great difficulty. 
 Moses, Samuel, and all the prophets had de- 
 scended into Hades. They were followed by the 
 apostles and by Jesus himself, as any one may 
 discover who has the Christian creed in his hand. 
 But there was a specific reason for this later incur- 
 sion, namely, that they might preach to those who 
 had died and bestow upon them the means of salva- 
 tion which were available for the living. Paul had 
 demonstrated that all had sinned, and that death 
 had passed upon all. For this condition of uni- 
 versal death the death of Jesus was the universal 
 remedy. It did seem hard that those who had died 
 before the fulness of time, through no fault of 
 theirs, inasmuch as they had not created them- 
 selves, should continue in death or, worse still, in 
 torment. Against this contingency many reme-
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 255 
 
 dies were devised. The living were baptized for 
 the dead, so that the regenerating effect of bap- 
 tism might be imputed retroactively to them. But, 
 best of all, the means of grace were borne to them 
 by Jesus and his disciples. It was a comfortable 
 doctrine. 
 
 There was a problem harder still, which these 
 courageous men were obliged to face. It con- 
 cerned the Christian converts and not the Jews, 
 Jesus, and Paul too, had a theory that life in this 
 world, even the world itself, would not long en- 
 dure. They were nourished upon the belief that 
 the fashion of this world would soon pass away. 
 The sun would be turned to darkness and the 
 moon to blood. The stars would fall. The heav- 
 ens would vanish with a great noise. The ele- 
 ments would melt with a fervent heat. It was a 
 later conception that there would be a new heaven 
 and a new earth, that the sign of the cross should 
 appear in the air, and that Jesus would make his 
 advent borne up by the clouds. Paul was firmly 
 convinced that these important events would take 
 place during the lifetime of some of those who 
 heard his voice. They would not die, but they 
 would be changed. The dead would be raised 
 incorruptible, and death swallowed up in victory. 
 
 In the mind of Jesus also this coming of the
 
 256 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 kingdom was so important in the early part of 
 his ministry that the affairs of this world found 
 little place. If, as he promised, certain of his dis- 
 ciples should not taste death until they had seen 
 the kingdom of God coming with power, they 
 could not be exjjected to interest themselves in 
 local affairs and transitory concerns. It was only 
 in such an atmosphere of expectation that the 
 ideal of Jesus could survive, dealing as it did with 
 the inner life of the individual. Society was past 
 caring for. The state was a foreign power. They 
 might pay tribute to Caesar or not. He was not a 
 judge over them in matters of law. The relation 
 of master and servant did not interest him. Nei- 
 ther poverty nor riches was worth talking about ; 
 and apart from the injunction against divorce for 
 frivolous reasons, the family received as scant 
 consideration as society. He denied any claim 
 upon his thought by his mother or his brethren. 
 Those alone who did the will of God were his 
 brother, his sister, his mother. 
 
 In the world of reality this ideal must fail. It 
 involved anarchy in government, communism in 
 property, and the end of all that civilization had 
 so laboriously built up. Indeed the experiment 
 was actually tried of abandoning all worldly pos- 
 sessions. The conduct of Ananias and Sapphira
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 257 
 
 is sufficient commentary upon its result, and 
 the shocking fate which befell them was intended 
 as a salutary warning to those who were dis- 
 posed to lie to the Holy Ghost by keeping back 
 "a part of the price." From what we know of 
 the immutability of human nature, we are not 
 disposed to wonder that so sharp a lesson was 
 needed. 
 
 In spite of these sure promises and high hopes, 
 nothing had happened. It was no longer of any 
 use to appeal to the emotions and the imagina- 
 tion. Jesus was dead. He was not coming again. 
 The disciples also who were to witness that com- 
 ing were passing away, — even the disciple to 
 whom Jesus was reported to have said that the 
 Gates of Hades should not prevail against him. 
 Jerusalem had fallen. This word of prophecy was 
 fulfilled, and yet the Parousia was as far off as 
 ever. Men were becoming impatient, and enquired 
 specifically if the coming should be in the second 
 watch of the night or in the third. The evangelists 
 did their best. The earliest eschatological deliver- 
 ance reads : " Immediately after the tribulation 
 of those days cometh the Son of Man." Mark 
 suppressed the word " immediately," and Luke 
 became still less explicit in the words, "These 
 things must needs come to pass first, but the end
 
 258 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 is not immediately." The Season of the Gentiles, 
 he affirmed, must intervene ; and those who be- 
 came discouraged were reminded by the parable 
 of the foolish virgins of the fate which overtook 
 those who fell asleep because the bridegroom 
 delayed his coming. 
 
 Yet the murmuring increased in intensity. To 
 allay it the Epistle to the Hebrews was written, 
 reassuring those who had witnessed the death of 
 a whole generation of Christians who had not 
 obtained the promise nor received salvation. The 
 Epistle of James with its dogmatic belief in 
 requital was written for the same purpose, to 
 urge the brethren to be patient unto the coming of 
 the Lord. The disappointment finds full expres- 
 sion in the Second Epistle of Peter, in which we 
 have an account of the mockers who exclaimed : 
 " Where is the promise of his coming ? For from 
 the day that the fathers fell asleep all things con- 
 tinue as they were." Against these mockers the 
 full force of Jewish vituperation is directed, and 
 the writer finds an explanation of the apparent 
 deception in the assumption that one day is with 
 the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand 
 years as one day. 
 
 These dialectical exercises were intended to 
 confound the Jews. For himself Paul had other
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 259 
 
 evidence for the authority of Jesus. The impres- 
 sion that he had seen " the Lord " was so strong 
 that no further attestation was required ; and we 
 shall arrive at no understanding of Paul's place 
 in the history of the development of theology, or 
 comprehend the work which he performed, if we 
 neglect the importance of that portentous experi- 
 ence which he encountered on the road from Jeru- 
 salem to Damascus. If we miss that central fact, 
 we are lost in any attempt to follow the course of 
 his thought. It was in the forefront of his preach- 
 ing. His life was determined by it. Continually he 
 abandons his speculative soteriology, and shapes 
 his course anew by that event. Twice he protests : 
 "Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord ?" ^ and 
 again : " Last of all he was seen of me also." ^ 
 Yet we have in three other separate places his 
 own account of what did actually occur, and in 
 not one does it appear that he had in reality 
 seen him. In Acts ix, 3-7, we are told that he 
 saw a light and heard a voice, that he asked cer- 
 tain questions and got certain replies. We are 
 also informed that the men with him heard a 
 voice, but saw no man. In Acts xxii, 6, we are 
 told that he saw a light, and heard a voice, and 
 asked certain questions, and received certain an- 
 1 1 Cor. ix, 1. 2 1 Cor. xv, 8.
 
 260 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 swers. They that were with liitn saw the Hgtt, 
 but heard no voice. In Acts xxvi, 13, he is cred- 
 ited with having seen a light ; and those that were 
 with him were fallen to the earth. Upon this occa- 
 sion he alone heard the voice and replied to its 
 questions. 
 
 A mystery has been made of this experience 
 of Paul. It differed only in degree from occur- 
 rences which any one may witness, who is careful 
 to observe the manifestations of the human mind. 
 Paul was a man of extraordinary mind, and it is 
 only to be expected that it would work in a 
 powerful way. There was nothing mysterious 
 about it, save in so far as conversion is always 
 mysterious, "a fresh miracle every time it occurs." 
 At any rate Paul had an experience on his way 
 to Damascus. It was to him the most important 
 thing in the world ; and his whole life was spent 
 in disclosing to men the importance of such an 
 experience for them. When he attempted a theo- 
 retical explanation of the occurrence he became 
 Saul the Rabbi, finding — to apply Mr. Bradley's 
 epigram about metaphysics — bad reasons in de- 
 fence of a position which could be won only by 
 instinct and experience. 
 
 The Jews by no means took their punishment 
 lying down. They gave as good as they got, by
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 261 
 
 weight of argument and authority, nor did they 
 neglect the employment of theii' fine talent for 
 vituperation and abuse. They directed the inci- 
 dent of Simon Magus against Paul. In the Apo- 
 calyj)se they deliberately excluded him from apos- 
 tolic rank. They delivered him up to the Romans 
 for judgement of death. Finally they had resort 
 to the great argument of physical force, and left 
 him for dead. As if this were not enough, they 
 uttered the basest slanders about his private life, 
 alleging with an ingenious stroke of malice that 
 he had embraced Christianity in a fit of pique 
 and perturbation of mind because his passion for 
 the daughter of the president of the Sanhedrim 
 had not been reciprocated. Jesus himself did not 
 escape these attentions. They said of him that he 
 was mad and, what was worse in their eyes, the 
 son of a Roman soldier. A similar slander has 
 been revived in our own time. 
 
 From Paul's claim of Tarsus in Cilicia as his 
 birthplace, his boast of Roman citizenship, and 
 his appeal to Caesar, — a boast which he made 
 once too often, else he might have been set at 
 liberty by Agrippa and Festus, — we are apt 
 to forget that his life was indissolubly bound up 
 with the Jewish life of Jerusalem. Certainly he 
 was educated in that environment, possibly in the
 
 262 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 house of his sister, whose son afterwards served 
 him so well. Yet in spite of his rabbinical train- 
 ing, he had a certain capacity for finding himself 
 at home amongst foreign ideas, which conveys the 
 impression that he was more thoroughly imbued 
 with those ideas than he really was. He had 
 scarcely a tincture of Greek philosophy, and no 
 conception whatever of Greek religion or sym- 
 pathy with that Greek View of Life which Mr. 
 Lowes Dickinson has set forth with so much 
 charm. They were mere heathen, bewitched by 
 the power of evil so that they came to believe in 
 a lie. 
 
 In reality Paul was untouched by the Greek 
 mind, though he used its forms, less, however, 
 than many Hebrews of his time. Before the 
 reign of Antiochus IV, many Jews of noble birth 
 strove, even at the cost of submitting to a surgi- 
 cal operation, to appear like Greeks in their per- 
 son, so enamoured were they of that rich, strong, 
 delicate, and free spirit. Three centuries before 
 the Jewish law was destroyed the official keepers 
 felt that it was slipping away in spite of the 
 elaborate framework which they had erected for 
 its preservation. They forged the name of God 
 and the Fathers to give sacredness to their work, 
 and prove that their church was of an everlasting
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 263 
 
 validity. Those who protested that the Levitical 
 ordinances were of recent device and only transi- 
 tory in their application, and that the time had 
 come for their abrogation that Israel might take 
 its place as a nation in the world, were hunted 
 from the temple as apostates and paganizers. The 
 later literature of the Hebrews is merely a reit- 
 eration of cursings against the inevitable end of 
 their nationality and the form of their religion. 
 The Hellenistic spirit was at work upon their 
 most sacred ordinances, and through them upon 
 the Jewish nationality. 
 
 Paul had failed in his attempt to break down 
 Jewish exclusiveness. The whole force and tide of 
 the facts was ag-ainst him. The messaoje of Jesus 
 was to his own people, although he was willing 
 that all men should hear it. The disciples did not 
 think it possible to go through all the cities of 
 Israel, the time was so short till the Son of Man 
 should come. Mark and Matthew make no men- 
 tion of any mission of the Gentiles. Indeed Mat- 
 thew limits it explicitly to Palestine. To the Jew 
 religion was a national system, the product of a 
 covenant drawn up between the God of the world 
 and a peculiar people who would enter into the her- 
 itage of it, who would bend all other peoples to 
 their stubborn will, and compel them to adopt Jew-
 
 264 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 ish ceremonial, juridical, and social customs as 
 the commandments of God. This was their law. 
 
 In reality Jesus, who cared very little about 
 this law, sujoposed that he was fulfilling it by neg- 
 lecting its observance. The disciples understood 
 that Jesus came to fulfil, not to destroy ; and the 
 burden of Paul's earlier preaching was that the 
 law had been fulfilled. But Jesus elaborated no 
 doctrine. He merely exemplified a holy life with 
 God, and gave himself in virtue of this life to the 
 service of his fellow-men, to lead them out of the 
 world of selfishness to a union in love in the king- 
 dom of God which now is and is eternal. By liv- 
 ing in the riches of his life with God, he became 
 for men a revelation of God of whom they heard 
 but had not known; and he did all this — won 
 men to God — and yet kept himself free from the 
 entanglement of politics and theology, and his fol- 
 lowers from bigotry or asceticism. According to 
 him the Christian church was merely a commun- 
 ion of hearts in union with God. This was the 
 true Israel. In this sense he fulfilled the law. 
 Henceforth the individual was not dependent for 
 salvation upon his descent from Abraham, but 
 upon his responsibility to God. In that sense the 
 law was destroyed. 
 
 Jesus brought into the world a new idea which
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 265 
 
 was absolutely destructive of Judaism, and Paul 
 was right when he said, " Christ is the end of the 
 law." Between them both they made this fact 
 evident to the world. Paul, however, accepted all 
 the postulates of the law, — the fall of man, origi- 
 nal sin, atonement by sacrifice. All was finished 
 in the death of Jesus, and by his theory of the 
 efficacy of that death he did not found a new theo- 
 logy, but merely effected a transformation of the 
 old. It was an attempt to put new wine into old 
 bottles ; but as Professor Macnaughton enquires 
 so pointedly: "If you have nothing but old bot- 
 tles, where else can you put your wine? " 
 
 This elaborate contrivance was devised for the 
 Jews, but it was too abstruse to appeal to their 
 taste. Paul made no attempt to impose this 
 system upon the Greeks. To appeal to them he 
 required a new theology, new to the Hebrews but 
 not to the Greeks. Nothing could be more pan- 
 theistic than his speech on Mars Hill, about a god 
 in whom all men live, and move, and have their 
 being. He merely offered to reveal to them an 
 additional god for their Pantheon, who had the 
 unusual qualification of raising men from the 
 dead. 
 
 He was quick to see that the Greeks demanded 
 a philosophy of religion, which the Jews never
 
 266 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 did, and he proceeded to supply that. They would 
 have a mystery and he would show them a mys- 
 tery. Abandoning his conceptions of the fall of 
 man, original sin, the blood-bought atonement 
 of God, and the sacrifice now transformed into 
 a sacrament, he seized upon their conception of 
 the logos, which he found ready at his hand, and 
 formulated the doctrine that Jesus was the Son 
 of God. It is extremely difficult to ascertain the 
 degree of definiteness which this doctrine assumed 
 in the mind of Paul, and there is a strong tend- 
 ency to impute to him a finality of conviction 
 which was attained only by his followers. To the 
 Jews Paul presented Jesus as the Messiah, and 
 they rejected him. To the Greeks he was lifted up 
 as the logos, and they were drawn unto him. To 
 them the logos was the wisdom of God as revealed 
 by humanity and the world, with a preexistence as 
 a distinct person. This idea fitted in well enough 
 with the Messianic idea to make it easy handling 
 for so clever a theologian as Paid, without resort- 
 ing to the coarse device of making Jesus say that 
 he was the logos. 
 
 There were many things which it would have 
 been convenient for Jesus to have said during 
 his lifetime, and occasion was taken of his resur- 
 rection to supply the omission. Matthew closed
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 267 
 
 his work with the command of the risen Lord to 
 evangelize and baptize after a formula which con- 
 fined salvation to the church. In the amazing 
 conclusion of Mark the comment is added, " He 
 that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but 
 he that believeth not shall be damned " ; and 
 these words are put into the mouth of Jesus. 
 
 This new theology by a confusion of metaphor 
 with argument offered an explanation of Jesus to 
 intelligent heathen. They worked upon it, and 
 finally wrenched Christianity from its foundation 
 and squared it with Greek ethics and Alexan- 
 drine philosophy. The approval of the cultured 
 was won, and the gods were cast down from their 
 place. It is Paul's claim to greatness that he 
 delivered Christianity from Judaism, and gave 
 to the Gospel a language which is somewhat intel- 
 ligible to us Gentiles. He thrust the law out of 
 religion mercilessly ; or rather prevented it from 
 forcing its way into Christianity again. 
 
 Christianity had scarcely emerged from its 
 conflict with the Jews when it was obliged to 
 encounter an enemy from within. The Gnostics 
 had withdrawn arrogantly from the church and 
 the fellowship. If we are correctly informed by 
 the writer of the First Epistle of John, they 
 hated ordinary Christians, criticized and despised
 
 268 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 them, and gave themselves up exclusively to their 
 mystic love of God. The polemic against this 
 sect had begun in the time of Paul. In the Epistle 
 to the Philippians and in the Epistle to the Ephe- 
 sians the watchword is proclaimed : Be united in 
 peace. There is one body, one spirit, one Lord, 
 one faith, one baptism. This controversy culmi- 
 nates in the Gospel of John. 
 
 Paul compromised with the Greeks, and won 
 them not for Christianity as it left the mind of 
 Jesus, but for a Christianity which had been cast 
 in a Hellenic mould. As in all compromises, there 
 were losses and gains. The Fourth Gospel is one. 
 If it were not for the existence of Mark and 
 Matthew, it would be hard to contradict success- 
 fully the logologists. Under the influence of this 
 doctrine the real Jesus was replaced by a hypo- 
 thetical Christ, by a personified word. He became 
 a mystery which could exist only in the vacuous 
 atmosphere of the professional philosopher. The 
 mystery in time replaced the person. The account 
 of it became " a programme of perfection." Then 
 followed an investigation of this mystery, and for- 
 mulas were devised which can be understood only 
 by professors of the mysterious. 
 
 One curious result remains firmly embedded 
 in the lower strata of Protestantism. The Fourth
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 269 
 
 Gospel begins : In the beginning was the logos, 
 and the logos was with God, and the logos was 
 a god. In the English version which is in most 
 common use, the term "logos" is translated as 
 "word." It is inferred that the Bible is the 
 Word, and hence that this collection of writings 
 is God, a perfectly unjustifiable conclusion. Pro- 
 fessor Harnack states very clearly the objection 
 to this logos theory in the words : " The doctrine 
 demands that this image should be apprehended 
 solely in the light of alleged hypotheses about 
 Jesus, expressed in theoretical propositions." 
 
 IV 
 What Jesus did, what Paul preached to the 
 Gentiles, is best summed up by the author of 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews : " He delivered them 
 who through fear of death were all their lifetime 
 subject to bondage." When it becomes to a man 
 a matter of entire indifference whether he lives 
 or dies, then is he free ; and if in addition he is 
 assured of a glorious resurrection, as the saying 
 is, then his manumission is complete. But what 
 Jesus meant by saving the soul was preserving it 
 alive, not restoring that which was already lost, 
 and the means which he recommended were a 
 change of mind, self-denial, humility, effacement.
 
 270 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 and trust in God. Henceforth the Christian life 
 was to be one of simplicity and purity of disj^osi- 
 tion, with a heart which was ever the same in 
 trouble, in renunciation, in possession, and use 
 of earthly good. The man is to be a new crea- 
 ture. 
 
 The Greeks understood this doctrine in its 
 grosser form. The certainty that Jesus could 
 raise men from the dead was the means by which 
 Christianity gained a foothold in the world. The 
 reverse conviction, that he could cast them into 
 hell, was an afterthought. Of course the more 
 intelligent of the heathen received this new doc- 
 trine with polite mockery, saying : " We will 
 hear thee again of this matter " ; as Cleon said 
 to Protus in Browning's poem : " This doctrine 
 could be held by no sane man." 
 
 The desire for immortality has always been the 
 dominant wish of humanity. To the Greeks espe- 
 cially, death was the greatest of all evils, and to 
 live for ever the chief of blessings. That is why 
 Paul's assurance of redemption from forgetful- 
 ness, elevation to the divine life, and final deifi- 
 cation, appealed to them so nearly. Paul had the 
 judgement of the Patriarch before him, that in 
 the business of death a man hath no preeminence 
 over the beast : the one like the other lieth down
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 271 
 
 and riseth not. In a more elaborate form he had 
 that great word of Preaching: "In the death of 
 a man there is no remedy ; neither was there any 
 man known to have returned from the grave. For 
 we are born to all adventure ; and we shall be 
 hereafter as though we had never been ; for the 
 breath in our nostrils is as smoke, and a little 
 spark in the moving of our heart : which being 
 extinguished, our body shall be turned into 
 ashes, and our spirit shall vanish as the soft air. 
 And our name shall be forgotten in time, and no 
 man shall have our works in remembrance, and 
 our life shall pass away as the trace of a cloud, 
 and shall be disposed as a mist that is driven 
 away with the beams of the sun and overcome 
 with the heat thereof. For our time is a very 
 shadow that j^asseth away; and after our end 
 there is no returning; for it is fast sealed, so 
 that no man cometh again." 
 
 Paul offered a reply to the wonder of Aris- 
 totle, " whether the dead really do partake of 
 good or evil." Unlike other wise men who went 
 before and came after him, he was not persuaded 
 of the futility of attempting it ; nor was he con- 
 vinced that " a dialogue between two infants in 
 the womb concerning the state of this world might 
 handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the next."
 
 272 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 Reasonable as the Greeks were, the future 
 state was not a matter of entire indifference to 
 them ; although, as Cebes remarked to Socrates, 
 in what concerned the soul they were apt to be 
 incredulous, and agreed with Plato, that " surely 
 it requires a great deal of argument and many 
 proofs to show that when a man is dead his soul 
 yet exists and has any force or intelligence." 
 And yet upon the important question which Job 
 puts : If a man die, shall he live again ? it mat- 
 tered little to Paul what wise men thought in 
 comparison with what he felt. 
 
 Truly this resurrection of the body was a new 
 thing to the Greeks. They yearned for immor- 
 tality. They were not in love with easeful death. 
 Their life was full and rich. With body and 
 mind they enjoyed it. Their senses were fine and 
 their intellects keen. Their passions were intense. 
 They loved life : it was so good. Corresponding 
 with their enjoyment of this world, they had a 
 horror of the decay of death. To these ancient 
 men it was an awful conception, this losing of 
 the body, and the soul going forth naked, cold, 
 and shuddering. They loved their souls. They 
 must lose them, and they were sad. Their religion 
 offered them no consolation. They had some 
 vague notion of a future world, but it was a chill,
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 273 
 
 comfortless place of shadows and phantoms, like 
 that In which Ulysses encountered his mother : 
 " ' Mother mine, wherefore dost thou not tarry 
 for me who am eager to seize thee, that even in 
 Hades we twain may cast our arms each about 
 the other, and satisfy us with chill lament ? Is it 
 but a phantom that the high goddess Persephone 
 hath sent me, to the end that I may groan for 
 more exceeding sorrow ? ' So spake I, and my 
 lady mother answered me anon : ' Ah me, my 
 child, luckless above all men. Nought doth Per- 
 sephone, the daughter of Zeus, deceive thee : but 
 even in this wise it is with mortals when they 
 die. For the sinews no more bind together the 
 flesh and the bones, but the force of burning fire 
 abolishes them, so soon as the life hath left the 
 white bones, and the spirit like a dream flies 
 forth and hovers near.' " 
 
 In the funeral oration delivered by Pericles 
 in memory of those who had fallen In war, as 
 reported by Thucydides, there is not much com- 
 fort from the suggestion of any life but this : " I 
 do not commiserate the parents of the dead who 
 stand here. I would rather comfort them. You 
 know that your life has been passed amid mani- 
 fold vicissitudes : and that they may be deemed 
 fortunate who have gained most honour, whether
 
 274 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 an honourable death like theirs or an honourable 
 sorrow like yours, and whose days have been so 
 ordered that the term of their happiness is like- 
 wise the term of their life. Some of you are at 
 an age at which they may hoj^e to have other 
 children, and they ought to bear their sorrow 
 better. Not only will the children who may here- 
 after be born make them forget their own lost 
 ones, but the city will be doubly a gainer. She 
 will not be left desolate and she will be safer. 
 For a man's counsels cannot be of equal weight 
 and worth, when he alone has no children to risk 
 in the general danger. To those of you who have 
 passed their prime I say : ' Congratulate your- 
 selves that you have been happy during the 
 greater part of your days ; remember that your 
 life of sorrow will not last long, and be comforted 
 by the glory of those who are gone. For the love 
 of honour alone is ever young, and not riches, as 
 some say, but honour is the delight of men when 
 they are old and useless.' " 
 
 The epitaphs of the Greeks, which remain to us, 
 are full of simple human feeling. They contain 
 slight suggestion of a continuance of the life of 
 the dead. The following is a precious example : 
 " Farewell, tomb of Melite. The best of women 
 lies here, who loved her loving husband, Ouesi-
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 275 
 
 mus. Thou wert most excellent, wherefore he 
 longs for thee after thy death ; for thou wert the 
 best of wives." — "Farewell thou too, dearest 
 husband ; only love my children." The apocry- 
 phal literature of the Orphic sect constitutes an 
 exception to this general statement. But the phi- 
 losophy of life and death in nature, which that 
 mystic brotherhood inculcated, never gained a free 
 acceptance, at least until the time of the Roman 
 Empire. 
 
 The fear of a God, of a power invisible, is 
 always the beginning of wisdom in the minds 
 of savages. The same fear was the beginning of 
 wisdom to the Jews. Every new religion appeals 
 to this desire for safety from obliteration after 
 death, and in such manner did Paul appeal to 
 the Greeks. I do not think his appeal touches us 
 so nearly. Let us be quite frank. We do not 
 believe that the thing which has died shall rise 
 again. Our belief rather is that that which lives 
 for ever has never died, cannot die. 
 
 What, now, was it that Paul preached to the 
 Gentile world ? That Jesus was the Son of God, 
 that he died, and rose from the dead. However in- 
 terested the philosophers might be in the first of 
 his propositions, the people at large seized upon the 
 last. That was the new thing which the Athenians
 
 276 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 were anxious to hear about, — the resurrection 
 of the dead. It was upon that question he was 
 called before Felix, " touching the resurrection" ; 
 and two years afterwards, when Agrippa sat in 
 the judgement seat, the case was " of one Jesus 
 which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive." 
 Of Agrippa he demanded : " Why should it be 
 thought a thing incredible with you that God 
 should raise the dead?" As if the announcement 
 were not sufficiently startling, it was combined 
 with the still more startling announcement that 
 many of those then living should not be obliged 
 even to go through the formality of dying. 
 
 When Paul said that Jesus arose from the 
 grave, he meant precisely what he said. He saw 
 the risen Jesus. It is one thing to believe Paul's 
 statement: it is quite another to accept his ex- 
 planation of what really did occur. He was a firm 
 believer in the resurrection of the flesh, as all 
 Jews were, and the matter was brought to an 
 issue in opposition to the Gnostics, who upheld a 
 spiritual eschatology. They attacked Paul with 
 his own words, that flesh and blood cannot inherit 
 the kingdom. The martyrs might well complain 
 if they were to be put off with an immaterial 
 body. They would say the thing had no mean- 
 ing. To believe anything else was pure docetism,
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 277 
 
 against which the writers of the Pastoral Epis- 
 tles delivered the full power of their argument, 
 to show that Jesus was in reality a man, and not 
 an appearance, that he died a real death, and 
 rose with that body which had been laid in the 
 grave. 
 
 The writer of the Fourth Gospel was prepared 
 for this docetic heresy, that the risen Jesus was 
 a phantom, which he puts into the mouth of Thomas 
 in the words : " Except I shall see in his hands 
 the print of the nails, and put my finger into the 
 print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his 
 side, I will not believe." Jesus appears and ac- 
 cepts the challenge with the words, " Reach hither 
 thy hand, and thrust it into my side." Ignatius 
 puts the case clearly when he asks : " Why should 
 I suffer myself to be cast to the lions for a faith 
 which rests upon an illusion ? " Paul is equally 
 clear in his declaration : " If Christ be not risen, 
 then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also 
 vain. If the dead rise not, what advantageth any- 
 thing?" A man might then as well eat, drink, 
 and be merry, if to-morrow he was about to die. 
 
 But this Jewish theory of the restoration of life 
 to a body which, like the body of Lazarus, " al- 
 ready stank," was disgusting to the more sensi- 
 tive Greeks. When the matter was brought before
 
 278 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 them at Athens some mocked, and others said po- 
 litely that they would like to hear more about it. 
 Paul instantly abandoned his belief in the resur- 
 rection of the flesh, and devised the new theory 
 of a spiritual body, thereby surrendering the very 
 essence of his doctrine. It requires only the slight- 
 est capacity for the perception of absurdity to 
 appreciate how feeble is the fallacy in his argument 
 that the dead body is sown as a natural body and 
 is raised as a spiritual body. It carries weight 
 only because it in turn is borne up by his splendid 
 declaration which ends with the cry of triumph, 
 " O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is 
 thy victory ? " Also this strange reasoning from 
 the facts of agriculture, physiology, and astronomy 
 passes unnoticed, because it is commonly heard 
 upon occasion when the emotions are dominant 
 over the intellect. Looking at the argument criti- 
 cally, one must dissent, and be prepared to accept 
 for himself the opprobrious epithet which Paul 
 applied to an equally recalcitrant objector of his 
 own day. 
 
 All systems of religion have their origin in the 
 desire for self-preservation. Prayers and sacrifices 
 were first devised to avert the misery which would 
 come from the destruction of cattle and the fail- 
 ure of crops. Any system in which there was a
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 279 
 
 reasonable probability of safety from death was 
 sure of acceptance. When probability was trans- 
 formed into certainty, success was assured. Jesus 
 redeemed men from the fear of death by teaching 
 them that death does not matter, that it also is a 
 gift from God. Paul based his appeal on the more 
 obvious ground that if men died at all, they would 
 soon overcome the inconvenience. As a result they 
 grew anxious to have the performance over. To 
 die was gain. Courage to live gave place to indif- 
 ference ; and fearlessness to a morbid craving for 
 death, to which martyrdom was the readiest road. 
 Disturbance of the normal attitude toward that 
 event arises out of abnormal notions about what 
 is to follow after. Exaggerated ideas of hell and 
 heaven have an influence upon conduct in this 
 world. As time went on, the doctrine of the resur- 
 rection became less spiritualized, and all the 
 churches which were founded by Paul reverted to 
 that grossly material belief of the Jews, by the 
 bold declaration of which the Gentiles were won. 
 Judaism was a religion of national hope, which 
 Christianity spiritualized and transformed into 
 hope for the world. Paganism at its worst was a 
 counsel of despair, and at its best little more than 
 negation. The Golden Age was past and gone. 
 Even if there were cycles of events in human his-
 
 280 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 tory, these were only the slow gradations of decay. 
 Of better things there was no promise. Vergil 
 alone of all the poets introduced in his fourth 
 Eclogue a note of hope into the despairing chorus; 
 and so singular is it, that certain scholars have 
 marked it as "Messianic," and attributed its ori- 
 gin to Hebrew influence. Christianity too had its 
 golden age in Eden. True, that happy period was 
 shared in by only two persons, and lasted not more 
 than a comparatively few moments. Yet there 
 was a way of return, and Paul had the explanation. 
 The one obvious fact in the world is the presence 
 of death, obvious alike to Jew and Gentile, to Jesus 
 and to us. Paul had an explanation of that too. 
 The whole creation is in a state of misery. Death 
 rules supreme, and clings to humanity like in- 
 fected and "rotten rags." The cause of death is 
 sin, and death passes upon all, because all have 
 sinned in the rabbinical sense of Adam's sin, and 
 in their own experience as well. Not only does he 
 admit that all are free to sin and to incur the 
 penalty; he affirms that sin is laid upon men as 
 a necessity. In this he offers two explanations of 
 the origin of sin, which are contradictory : the one, 
 that it is due to Adam's fall; and the other, that 
 it is due to the earthly nature which we in common 
 with him inherit.
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 281 
 
 Paul is not concerned with reconciling these two 
 statements, that sin is the cause and again the 
 effect of the fall. He is more concerned with 
 demonstrating the solidarity of the race, and the 
 universality of sin, at the expense of admitting 
 a second principle side by side with God, caring 
 not that his thought becomes not Jewish and yet 
 not wholly Greek, in order that he may demon- 
 strate the supreme necessity for the death of Jesus 
 and the universal validity of the sacrifice. " None 
 is righteous; no, not one," is the pessimistic pre- 
 lude to his apologetic that Jesus alone is the 
 Redeemer of men. 
 
 To the Jewish mind, forgiveness could come 
 only through sacrifice, and for such a condition as 
 universal sin Paul declared nothing less than uni- 
 versal sacrifice would suffice. Accordingly Jesus 
 must be the Messiah of God, in order that his 
 propitiatory death should once and for all relieve 
 men and angels from the necessity for any minor 
 sacrifices. The law was fulfilled and destroyed 
 in the same moment. Yet Paul freed this sacri- 
 fice from the gross idea that it was given to an 
 angry god to turn away his wrath, or to a devil 
 in order that he might release his hold. It was 
 love alone which instigated God to this sacrifice 
 of his Son, to certify to men that a complete act
 
 282 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 of propitiation had taken place, of which they 
 might fully avail themselves. The cross then 
 becomes the symbol of God's love. 
 
 The Jews had their own method of dealing with 
 sin, in which they employed rams, goats, turtle- 
 doves, and young pigeons. It was not the way 
 of Jesus. He said simply, Thy sins be forgiven 
 thee, follow me. Those who accepted this advice 
 were elevated to a peculiar condition of happiness. 
 They were redeemed from sickness and suffering. 
 The alienated from the church were brought 
 back to God. The outcasts were consoled by his 
 compassion. They received the love which they 
 needed. They were redeemed from the theologi- 
 ans, from the Jewish church, from fear and care. 
 By his fearlessness he gave them courage to face 
 the temptations of the world. Even death he 
 robbed of its terror. Death could not be a punish- 
 ment for sin, since he, the sinless one, himself died. 
 Such a combination of innocence and experience, 
 ingenuousness and wisdom, observation and hope, 
 austerity and blithesome joy, could exist only in 
 the person of Jesus. When he perished, a fresh 
 explanation was required of that miracle by which 
 a man is turned away from following after evil 
 and cleaves to that which is good. 
 
 Two methods presented themselves. Nay, there
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 283 
 
 was but one. His teaching was inseparable from 
 his person. He was dead. Rightly or wrongly his 
 followers presented him to their fellow-country- 
 men in a new guise. They declared that he was 
 the Messiah, and his death the supreme and all- 
 sufficient sacrifice. 
 
 This attempt to make of Jesus the Messiah was 
 a bold one. Success would mean that the strong- 
 hold of Jewish aspiration had been captui-ed, be- 
 cause it was upon this idea that all the national 
 hope was fixed. The best account which we have 
 of the dominance of this faith is contained in 
 " The Book of Jubilees," written in Hebrew by 
 a Pharisaic upholder of the Maccabean dynasty, 
 discovered complete in an Ethiopia version, and 
 translated by Dr. R. H. Charles, Professor of 
 Biblical Greek in Trinity College, Dublin. This 
 book is a reediting of early history, whereby the 
 spirit of later Judaism is infused into the primi- 
 tive history of the world. The object of the writer 
 was to defend Judaism against those who were 
 protesting that the time had come for the Leviti- 
 cal ordinance of the law to be swept away, and for 
 Israel to take its place in the brotherhood of the 
 nations. He endeavoured to show that the law 
 was of everlasting validity, that it had been kept 
 in heaven by the angels, and would be kept to all
 
 284 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 eternity. These were the palmiest days of the 
 Maccabean dominion, in which the immediate 
 advent of the Messiah sprung from Judah was 
 expected, whose kingdom would be realized on 
 earth, and the transformation of physical nature 
 would go hand in hand with the ethical transfor- 
 mation of the people. There would be a new 
 heaven and a new earth. All sin and pain would 
 disappear, and men would live to the age of a 
 thousand years in happiness and peace, and after 
 death enjoy a blessed immortality in the spirit 
 world. 
 
 The Messiahship must have been revolting to 
 Jesus, especially in the earlier part of his minis- 
 try. To him the suggestion was the voice of Satan, 
 that he should attain to power and sovereignty 
 as an earthly king. To whatever degree he may 
 have acquiesced in the idea before his death, it 
 was entirely foreign to his nature that he should 
 think of himself as a conqueror on a white steed 
 at the head of a heavenly host, and the eagles 
 gathered together to devour the dead bodies of 
 the slain. 
 
 The advent of this Messiah was important to 
 the Jews alone. The Gentiles were to have no 
 part in the realization of the hope, and the course 
 of Christianity was shaped to conform with this
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 285 
 
 narrow national ambition. It is as if Christian 
 Scientists were to write the life of the founder of 
 their sect to prove that in their society was real- 
 ized the Utopia of which Mr. Wells prophesied. 
 To us Gentiles the appearance of the Messiah 
 was an event rather to be dreaded, since the He- 
 brew race has never been winsome in its moment 
 of triumph. It is in the light of this hope we 
 must read the Gospels. Jesus said, " I thirst," 
 not because he was enduring the last things, but 
 " in order that the scripture might be fulfilled," 
 as the later writers, Matthew and John, are so 
 careful to record. The Old Testament was ran- 
 sacked for proof that Jesus was the promised one. 
 The sacrifices and trespass-offerings, the offering 
 up of Isaac, the brazen serpent in the wilder- 
 ness, were interpreted in this sense, and the apolo- 
 gists did not refrain from forgery in striving to 
 strengthen their cause. 
 
 Descent from David was necessary, and after 
 the death of Jesus a genealogy was constructed, 
 a feat to which his relatives would not object. 
 Rather, two genealogies were contrived to meet 
 the case, which unfortunately differ from each 
 other in certain important particulars ; but the 
 task was comparatively easy, as the discovery of 
 the miraculous birth had not yet been made. This
 
 286 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 Davidic theory implied that Bethlehem was the 
 scene of the nativity, although it was well known 
 that Jesus came from Nazareth. To meet this dif- 
 ficulty, the first evangelist explains how it came 
 about that Jesus lived in Nazareth, and Luke has 
 an elaborate, though circumstantial, account of 
 the circumstances under which the child came to 
 be born in the proper place. Another difficulty 
 was the baptism by John, since that implied the 
 inferiority of Jesus. This was avoided by all three 
 evangelists, each in his own way. Matthew records 
 that Jesus merely suffered himself to be baptized. 
 Luke lessens the difficulty by recording the mag- 
 nanimous testimony of the Baptist; and John 
 makes him the first to confess Jesus publicly. 
 
 A new difficulty arose. Jesus was obviously a 
 man, and a layman at that, as Professor Wernle, 
 who above all investigators combines religious 
 feeling with sane scholarship and calm criticism, 
 continually insists. He was born and brought 
 up amongst his neighbours. They knew his par- 
 ents, his brothers, his sisters ; and quite probably 
 they employed him to exercise his trade. They 
 had no suspicion of his greatness. His own par- 
 ents thought him mad. In the earlier account 
 of his life as given by Mark we are continually 
 reminded of the limitations of his physical and
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 287 
 
 even of his moral powers. He is obliged to seek 
 information from his followers. He asks them 
 the subject of their conversation, how long the 
 epileptic had suffered from his malady, what was 
 the name of the demon, and who it was that had 
 touched him. He does not know the day nor hour 
 of the Parousia, nor has he authority to assign 
 places of honour in heaven. At times he cannot 
 perform miracles. He cannot heal the sick nor 
 make the blind to see. He will not even suffer 
 himself to be called good, an admission which the 
 later evangelists are careful to omit. These facts 
 were inconvenient, and they disposed of them by 
 the easy literary devices which were commonly 
 employed in those days. 
 
 But the chief obstacle to the claims of Mes- 
 siahship was the fact of Jesus' death. That could 
 not be denied, nor was it desirable that it should 
 be. On the contrary, evidence was offered that it 
 was so. The testimony of the Roman soldiers was 
 given, and, as if to make doubly sure, the inci- 
 dent of the spear-thrust was put forward. This 
 objection was met by the affirmation that Jesus 
 rose from the dead. The Jews admitted the pos- 
 sibility, but explained the occurrence in a man- 
 ner which brought credit to themselves. It was 
 well known, they said, that a body placed in a
 
 288 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 tomb which was occupied by that of a prophet 
 would revive when it came in contact with the 
 sacred bones. The answer to this was that the 
 body of Jesus had been laid in a new sepulchre 
 that was hewn out of a rock, wherein never man 
 before was laid. Finally the Jews retorted that 
 the disciples had stolen the body, but this charge 
 was refuted by the story of the sealing of the 
 tomb, and the w^atch which was set. And so the 
 contention went on and grew in intensity, as one 
 may learn who reads the Gospels in the order 
 in which they were written. The Jews asserted 
 that the death of Jesus was a punishment. To 
 this the Christians retorted, " Yes ; but for your 
 sins." The controversy was in this simple form 
 when Paul appeared upon the scene, importing 
 new conceptions of sacrifice, propitiation, and 
 redemption. By a rapid manipulation of these 
 theological ideas, he complicated the subject, con- 
 fused his opponents, and left to us this specula- 
 tive burden of sin and its atonement. The things 
 which we prize in the life of Jesus were of little 
 value in the estimation of Paul. His life was as 
 nothing in comparison with the theological im- 
 portance of his death. 
 
 There was nothing improbable in the resurrec- 
 tion of Jesus. The Jews were convinced upon
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 289 
 
 much less striking testimony that the Baptist had 
 risen from the dead ; and it was a settled convic- 
 tion amongst the Greeks that Asklepios, who had 
 been struck by lightning, ascended up into heaven. 
 Clement found a powerful analogy in the case of 
 the Phoenix. Yet Paul was not content to take 
 for granted a fact which was so amply attested 
 by Peter, by the twelve, by himself, and by five 
 hundred of the brethren, of whom many were 
 yet alive and amenable to questions. He pro- 
 ceeded to prove it by ethical considerations. He 
 attempted a theoretical explanation of it, and so 
 raised the controversy above vulgarity. The death 
 and resurrection implied that the old was at an 
 end, — sin, death, the ruin of Adam's fall, — and 
 that the day of the heavenly kingdom had already 
 dawned. But experience was against him. The 
 flesh continued to lust against the spirit, and his 
 experiment in founding Jewish Christianity upon 
 a miracle had failed. He did not succeed in con- 
 vincing the Jews, even if he succeeded in convinc- 
 ing himself. The parable of the sower had a fresh 
 application. The task was impossible. 
 
 The idea of the priesthood was so ingrained in 
 the Jewish nature that the next move was to make 
 of Jesus a high priest ; and in this attempt the 
 writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews exercises
 
 290 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 unusual theological subtlety. Jesus might be the 
 son of David. Obviously he was not of the 
 priestly line. But he was something greater. He 
 was a high priest after the order of Melchise- 
 dee, that ghostly figure to whom Abraham paid 
 tithes, and offered other marks of reverence. The 
 authority of Jesus was therefore, in point of 
 antiquity, greater than that of any priest, even 
 were it Aaron himself. In other respects also his 
 superiority was revealed. The priests of Aaron 
 were many ; they were sinful ; they worshipped 
 in a temple made with hands ; they made atone- 
 ment year by year with the blood of bulls and 
 calves. But Jesus was one; he was sinless; he 
 worshipped in the heavenly temple ; he made 
 atonement once for all, and that with his own 
 blood. In all this the author is very clever, but 
 not clever enough to notice that Jesus cannot at 
 the same time be victim and priest and yet main- 
 tain his authority. 
 
 This theological trifling would do very well for 
 the Jews. The Greeks were not more interested 
 in the Messiah than we are. They demanded a god, 
 or at least the son of a god, and forthwith their 
 need was supplied. Nor was this task easy even 
 in the hands of Paul, in face of the deep humility 
 of Jesus, who rebuked the rich young man with
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 291 
 
 the words, " Why callest thou me good ? There is 
 none good but God." 
 
 To the Greek mind the idea was very familiar 
 that the gods walked the earth in human form, 
 and the very process of reasoning which Paul 
 applied to Jesus was now applied to himself. At 
 Lystra, where he had healed the man who was 
 impotent in his feet, — a thing he might easily 
 do, seeing that the man had faith to be healed, 
 — the people cried with one voice, "The gods 
 are come down to us in the likeness of men " ; 
 and the priest of Jupiter brought oxen and gar- 
 lands unto the gates and would have done sacri- 
 fice with the people. Again, when the barbarous 
 people of Melita saw him shake off into the fire 
 the viper which had fastened itself onto his hand, 
 and that he did not swell up or fall down dead, 
 they changed their minds and said that he was 
 a god. 
 
 It is worth remarking that the accounts which 
 are given of the miracles which Paul performed 
 are given with some reserve. We are not told 
 that he was actually bitten by the venomous beast. 
 When he was stoned by the Jews who had come 
 from Antioch and Iconium, and came to himself 
 again, he was only supposed to have been dead. 
 Again, the fortunate young man, Eutychus, who
 
 292 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 as Paul was long preaching sunk down with sleep 
 and fell from the third loft, and was taken up 
 for dead, was not in reality dead, for the Apostle 
 specifically declared that they should not trouble 
 themselves, as his life was yet in him. 
 
 Simon Magus claimed openly that he was a 
 god. The Emperor Augustus was publicly ac- 
 claimed as dominus ac deus noster. In Egypt the 
 Ptolemies had been equally blessed. The Stoic 
 sect of Heraclitus went still further and declared 
 that all men are gods, and the Neo-Platonists 
 spoke of their philosophers indifferently as lord, 
 god, angel. Finally, when Polycarp was burned 
 by the Smyrnaeans, they took measures that the 
 Christians should not accord to him divine hon- 
 ours. In this case, however, there was an especial 
 reason for deification, since he had died the mar- 
 tyr's death, and in the Semitic sacrificial ritual the 
 blood of the martyr possessed a peculiar virtue 
 in the atonement for sin. That is the reason, also, 
 why the blood of Jesus so readily lent itself to the- 
 ological speculation and reflection. The fourth 
 book of the Maccabees gives the best account of 
 the power which vicarious suffering exercises 
 upon the determination of God. The whole theory 
 of punishment and propitiation was applied to 
 the death of Jesus, by which it was transformed
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 293 
 
 from a manifestation of love to a juridical and 
 forensic affair, as merely the mechanical fulfilment 
 of prophecy, for no other reason than " that the 
 scriptures might be fulfilled." 
 
 The Jews protested. They accused the Chris- 
 tians of idolatry ; and they in turn, to defend 
 themselves, transferred this charge to Jesus, as- 
 signing it as the cause of his condemnation to 
 death. Mark merely suggests. John reproduces 
 the accusation plainly : " He blasphemes God in 
 that he, being a man, made himself equal to 
 God." If this were the charge upon which Jesus 
 was condemned, then the statement contained in 
 it must be true, and the Pauline theory correct. 
 
 The Greeks misunderstood the Hebrew usage 
 in respect of the word " son." They supposed 
 that Son of God meant a heavenly being who 
 had proceeded in some mysterious way from the 
 Father, whilst in reality it had a general meaning 
 such as is found in the expression, sons of the 
 Pharisees, sons of the kingdom, sons of the devil, 
 or sons of hell. Then, by analogy with other 
 myths of the gods, the parentage of the Son of 
 God is ascribed to God and a mortal woman, as 
 described in the opening chapters of the First 
 and Third Gospels. Most of the Jewish Christians 
 rejected it, as it did away with the descent from
 
 294 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 David. Of course the Christian spirit worked 
 upon this heathen fabrication and removed from 
 it every trace of sensuality. Justin found an 
 analogy with Perseus, who was born of a virgin, 
 and Celsus found further analogies in Amphion, 
 -3]acus, and Minos. His death, too, was compared 
 with that of Asklepios, who was struck by light- 
 ning, Dionysos, who was dismembered, and Hera- 
 cles, who was burned on the funeral pyre. 
 
 The Jews as the chosen people were the sons 
 of God, replacing the angels who previously bore 
 that high designation. Paul transferred the title 
 to all Christians, as in the letter to the Galatians, 
 " Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit 
 into your hearts." But when in the development 
 of his thought Jesus came to occupy a more ex- 
 alted position, the term Son was reserved for him 
 alone, and Christians were spoken of as children. 
 
 But Paul never uses deliberately the expres- 
 sion. Son of God, in its specific sense. It is only 
 when he is under the influence of strong emotion, 
 and attains to one of his splendid elevations of 
 thought, that he assigns to Jesus a closer relation 
 to God than that which is implied by love alone. 
 The " divinity of Christ " had not yet become a 
 subject of theological speculation, of dogmatic 
 statement, or settled belief. To Paul Jesus was " a
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 295 
 
 man such as we are," in spite of the equivocal ex- 
 pressions in which the words " image," "picture," 
 "pattern," and "likeness" appear. To the Greeks 
 he was a god who had descended from heaven ; 
 and they were now in possession of anew "idea" 
 like those with which they were familiar. But the 
 death of this god was to the Greeks a stumbling- 
 block, as the death of the Messiah had been to 
 the Jews an offence. A theoretical explanation 
 of the event must be found, if the Jews were to 
 be silenced and the Gentiles won. 
 
 Until our own time it was accounted a horrible 
 thing to distinguish between the deity and the 
 divinity of Jesus. It was upon that question 
 Michael Servetus went to the stake. In his sym- 
 pathetic study of that strange man. Professor 
 Osier affirms that, if the victim had been willing 
 to transpose one word in his confession, the burn- 
 ing sulphur in his crown of straw would have 
 been quenched. It was all an affair of Jesus 
 ceternus Jilius Dei, or Jesus Jilius mterni Dei. I 
 do not think, however, that he makes enough of 
 the Christian charity of Calvin, who plead for 
 the heretic the gentle courtesy of the ax, rather 
 than the extreme penalty, estre hrusle tout vyfz. 
 
 It is only fair to remark that it was the authors 
 of the Gospels and not Paul who fully elaborated
 
 296 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 this theory. He knew nothing of those writings, 
 and makes no reference to their authority. His 
 description of the Last Supper may be drawn 
 from an earlier source ; it may have been received 
 from one who was actually present at the meal. 
 Paul never went so far as to elevate Jesus to an 
 equality with God. The utmost he conceded was 
 that he was higher than the angels. It was left 
 for the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews to 
 force into Christianity the Alexandrine concep- 
 tion that the world was created by the Son of 
 God. That made it easy for the writer of the 
 Fourth Gospel to declare in his pi'ologue, " In 
 the beginning was the logos, and the logos was 
 with God, and the logos was a god." 
 
 This bold declaration served a double pur- 
 pose. It reduced the intermediary beings from a 
 heavenly host of angels to one, and strengthened 
 the belief in Jesus, as one " who verily was fore- 
 ordained before the foundation of the world, but 
 was manifest in these last times for you." It 
 squared with the Semitic belief that the Messiah 
 eternally dwelt with God, and that his appear- 
 ance was merely a transition from concealment 
 to publicity. The temple itself was in heaven. 
 Moses saw it when he was on the Mount, and its 
 appearance on earth was merely the result of a
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 297 
 
 revelation. A heavenly origin was also secured 
 for the patriarchs, the law^, the church, indeed 
 for all things of real value. They were hidden 
 with God until the time of their appearance was 
 fulfilled. According to this theory Jesus was a 
 revelation, not an incarnation, and the difficult 
 question was settled as to what became of his 
 body when he ascended to heaven. 
 
 Nothing could be more absurd than putting 
 Paul to the question about matters of which he 
 had no knowledge. There is no hint in his letters 
 that he had been informed that Jesus ascended 
 up into heaven. Those writings which are so fa- 
 miliar to us under the name of Gospels and Acts 
 were not open to his view, and upon only one 
 possible occasion does he refer to their contents. 
 He knew nothing of a risen Jesus who eat fish, 
 expounded doctrine, passed through closed doors, 
 and upbraided the eleven for their hardness of 
 heart and disbelief that he had risen. Neither, 
 we must admit, was he baffled, as we are, by the 
 contradictory accounts which are given by Luke 
 and John, the one affirming that the ascension took 
 place upon the day of the resurrection, the other 
 that the event was delayed for forty days. Both 
 accounts cannot be correct, and the discrepancy 
 suggests the suspicion that both may be inaccurate.
 
 298 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 It is difficult for us to comprehend that wears the 
 Gentiles of whom Jesus and the disciples spoke. 
 Neither he nor they thought much about us. And 
 yet all Protestant Gentiles habitually think of 
 themselves as Jews. We have incorporated into 
 ourselves the hatreds of the Maccabees, and cast 
 about for some object upon which those passions 
 may expend themselves. We hear read that lovely 
 lyric of the captivity in which the exile sits and 
 weeps by the river of Babylon, whilst song and 
 mirth is required of him. For him there is some 
 excuse for the utterance of that fearful impreca- 
 tion upon his tormentor and oppressor, "Happy 
 shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones 
 against the stones." For us there is none ; and yet 
 we make the curse our own, and strive for some 
 object upon which it may expend itself. In default 
 of oppressor and tormentor there is no other than 
 some rival sect; and this Hebrew bitterness is 
 poured out upon Catholic, Episcopalian, or Pres- 
 byterian, as the case may be. This Hebraic frame 
 of mind persists because traditional Christianity 
 is cast in a Jewish mould. 
 
 V 
 
 The Greeks before long had a system of reli- 
 gion which they could comprehend by reason of
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 299 
 
 its mysteriousness. Christianity had been subli- 
 mated into a more elaborate mystery than their 
 own Eleusinian rites ; yet both were expressed in 
 the same terms, or, at least, in terms which were 
 interchangeable. Symbolism, ritual, ceremonial, 
 and highly dramatized representation was the only 
 method by which the Greeks could enter into the 
 meaning of religious truth. After six centuries 
 their religious performance had grown so extrava- 
 gant and unreal that it lost its power over the ima- 
 gination and the life. They yearned for something 
 new, for a " restatement," as their young preach- 
 ers doubtless expressed the need. Amongst the 
 sect of the Nazarenes, now expanded into the com- 
 mimity of the Christians, they found the new thing 
 which they desired. 
 
 At the outset of the Christian ceremonial 
 the Greeks encountered a process of purification 
 by washing in the running water of a sacred 
 river, devised by one who was known as the Bap- 
 tist. They did not know what it signified; and 
 even Professor Harnack confesses that no one yet 
 understands what was meant by the baptism of 
 John. It was foreign to Jewish ritual. Jesus him- 
 self did not baptize, Paul was sent to preach, 
 not to perform ceremonies: and he thanks God 
 that he had baptized none of the Corinthians,
 
 300 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 save Galus, and Crispus, and the household of 
 Stephanas. 
 
 The utmost we can say is that the baptism of 
 John was a baptism to repentance in contradis- 
 tinction with the baptism performed in the name 
 of Jesus, which was a baptism of forgiveness, per- 
 formed upon adults alone with consecrated water, 
 that is, with water from which the evil spirits 
 which infested all material things had been ban- 
 ished. But presently the idea of forgiveness dis- 
 appeared. There was no longer any miraculous 
 communication of the spirit, and the rite became 
 rather a guarantee of a blessing than a bless- 
 ing in itself, a means by which "enlightenment" 
 might come. The very word suggests that we are 
 now upon Greek ground. To the Greeks it would 
 suggest the initiatory rite by which entrance was 
 gained into the lesser mysteries, a purification by 
 bathing in a stream under the ministration of the 
 hydranos^ the bather or sprinkler. 
 
 Entrance into the greater mystery was not per- 
 mitted until a year later, and the ceremony took 
 place in the city after a solemn procession and 
 formal cleansing of the temple. The Greeks had 
 heard that the public ministry of Jesus had occu- 
 pied an exact year, and that he did not go up to 
 the sacred city until nine days before its expi-
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 301 
 
 ration. They had read of the great procession 
 in which " multitudes went before and followed 
 after" him, and that upon his arrival in Jerusa- 
 lem he purified the temple. They could not fail to 
 notice in the Gospel of Mark that expression so 
 strange to us, and still more strange on account 
 of its omission from all the later Gospels : " He 
 would not suffer that any man should carry a vessel 
 through the temple"; and they would remember 
 that it was to the entrants alone into the priest- 
 hood of Demeter that it was permitted to carry 
 the sacred vessel and repeat the formula, " I have 
 borne the kernos.^^ 
 
 At Athens there was a sacred fig-tree at which 
 the procession halted, and they had read that Jesus, 
 returning from Bethany on the second day, saw 
 a fig-tree afar off, and rested in its shade. These 
 simple-minded heathen, in their ignorance of Jew- 
 ish polemics, could not comprehend the signifi- 
 cance of the incident and of the curse which was 
 laid upon the innocent tree ; that it was in reality 
 an oblique condemnation of Israel and not a mere 
 manifestation of truculence in a moment of dis- 
 appointment and the temporary irritation of hun- 
 ger. The ceremony of purification was also familiar 
 to them, and there would be nothing strange in 
 the incident of Jesus washing the disciples' feet,
 
 302 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 or of tlie earlier account of the " man bearing a 
 pitcher of water." 
 
 In the account of the infant lying in the 
 manger until he was " found " by the shepherds, 
 they would see an analogy of the old rite in which 
 at midnight in the shortest day of the year the 
 women went forth to the mountain-side and found 
 the new-born god, Licnites, cradled in a winnow- 
 ing-sieve. In the cry of the Baptist, " Behold the 
 lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the 
 world," they might well recall the sacred fleece 
 which was laid upon the feet of sinners, when 
 their sins had been washed away, — the emblem 
 of lacchus, the redeeming god. 
 
 In the incident of the marriage-feast at Kana- 
 Galilee, an educated Greek would find a replica of 
 the feast of Kalligeneia, the " mother of the fair 
 child." So far as we can learn, there was no place 
 in Galilee by the name of Kana. The " mother 
 of the fair child" would appear to him to be 
 identical with the mother of Jesus, who is twice 
 mentioned as being present at the feast; and the 
 " drawers-up " of the wine would be a forcible 
 reminder of the " drawers-up" in the earlier cere- 
 mony. In the miracle of the herd of swine which 
 ran violently down a steep place into the lake 
 and were choked, he would recognize the entomb-
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 303 
 
 ing of pigs during the festival of the Thesmo- 
 phoria. 
 
 Nor would the Greeks find the Last Supper of 
 the Gospels an innovation. They could not under- 
 stand what Jesus meant when he said : " I am the 
 living manna which came down from Heaven " ; 
 but his sudden transference of thought to the 
 idea of drink would remind them of their own 
 common meal upon the fifth day of the Eleu- 
 sinian mysteries, at which the celebrants partook 
 together of a mixture compounded of barley-meal 
 and water, which was so thickened as to be at 
 once food and drink. 
 
 The most solemn part of their ceremony was 
 "the handing over of the holy things," one of 
 which was a sesame cake ; and they had read in 
 Mark that Jesus, having blessed the unleavened 
 bread, broke it, and said simply, " Take ye." Pos- 
 sibly they were not acquainted with the later for- 
 mula given by Matthew, " Take, eat, this is my 
 body," and consequently they would not be mysti- 
 fied by the innovation. Also in the account of the 
 Last Supper as recorded by Luke there is men- 
 tion of two cups. The one was used before supper 
 with the words, " Take this, and divide it among 
 yourselves." The second cup was used after the 
 food had been eaten, as was the custom amongst
 
 304 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 celebrants proceeding to the higher stages in the 
 mysteries. It was at a comparatively late period 
 that this handing over of the elements was inter- 
 preted as a handing over or betrayal of Jesus ; 
 and it came about from the fact that the same 
 word in Greek as well as in English is used to 
 express the two different ideas of betrayal and 
 handing over. In the more specific account of the 
 betrayal we are told that one of the disciples 
 kissed Jesus fervently, not with the kiss of a 
 traitor, but " again and again," as a lover would. 
 To us Judas is the arch-traitor ; to the Greeks 
 he may well have been the analogue of the priest 
 who handed over the most sacred of all things. 
 Even the linen cloth is not wanting in which 
 the precious thing might be wrapped ; for do we 
 not read of that certain young man who, having 
 a linen cloth cast about his naked body, left the 
 linen cloth and fled from them naked ? 
 
 A more obvious resemblance to their own reli- 
 gion which the Greeks would find in Chi'istianity 
 was in the jesting and reviling to which the en- 
 trants were subjected, as they went through the 
 streets crowned with myrtle, a fawn-skin over the 
 shoulders, and a staff in the hand. Jesus, they 
 read, had been clad in a scarlet robe ; a wreath 
 of acanthus was placed upon his head ; a reed
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 305 
 
 was put in his hand; and he was mocked and 
 reviled. At this time it had not occurred to the 
 Jews that the casting of lots and the scourging 
 were indulged in merely that "the scriptures 
 might be fulfilled." That discovery was made 
 only by the writer of the Fourth Gospel. The 
 Greeks would find in it a reference to the small 
 bones of their own mysteries, which were used 
 singly as dice for gaming, and as a scourge when 
 strung together. The last words which Jesus ut- 
 tered would convey to a Greek who had attained 
 to the highest place in the mysteries the same 
 meaning which was implied by his own words : 
 "All has been performed; the consecration is 
 complete." 
 
 To the Jews the crucifixion was the great stum- 
 bling-block. To the Greeks it was possible to 
 explain it in a symbolical and figurative sense. 
 Indeed the word employed by the writers of the 
 Gospels to signify " crucify " signified in classi- 
 cal Greek to enclose with palisades, to set apart, 
 to fence, to consecrate. This is the word in that 
 passage from " Empedocles on Etna," which Mat- 
 thew Arnold renders : 
 
 " Thou keepest aloof the profane. . . . 
 Thou fencest him from the multitude — 
 Who will/ewce him from himself? "
 
 306 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 Finally, the sacred place of Demeter was in 
 "a grove"; it was hewn out of "a rock," and 
 was known as the cell or sepulchre. In the mys- 
 teries, " a memento " was given to the votaries, 
 who kept it " in a linen cloth " ; and they could 
 read of that counsellor who " bought fine linen, 
 and took him down, and wrapped him in the linen, 
 and laid him in a memorial place which had been 
 hewn out of a rock." This is the account which 
 Mark gives, and the writings of Matthew may not 
 then have been extant, in which "memorial place " 
 is in our translation made to read " tomb." 
 
 I have thought well to set forth this subtle exe- 
 gesis at some length by availing myself freely of 
 Mr. Slade Butler's adroit scholarship,^ his clever- 
 ness in contriving analogies, and dexterity in 
 devising expedients, so that nothing now remains 
 to be said, save this : that a picturesque and fan- 
 tastic allegorizing of an event does not convey an 
 intimation that the event had not really occurred. 
 On the contrary, it rather adds certainty that 
 Jesus was "lifted up," and in virtue of that draws 
 all men unto him. 
 
 When Judaistic Christianity emerged in its 
 nebulous form from the Greek mind, fortunately 
 it fell under the domination of the Roman idea of 
 
 1 Nineteenth Century, March, 1905 ; December, 1906.
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 307 
 
 law and order. It passed over from the hungry 
 Greeklings, as Juvenal describes the inhabitants of 
 Corinth, to the stalwart Romans of Philippi, whom 
 Paul loved above all his converts. From these alone 
 would he receive any contribution to his support, 
 preferring to labour with his own hands rather 
 than accept favours from the supple Greeks. 
 
 A closer organization of the church was the first 
 effect of the Roman influence, and with it went 
 the hardening of enthusiasm into a creed. It is a 
 mistake, however, to suppose that the church at 
 any time has ever deliberately formulated a creed. 
 Occasionally, as a measure of defence, it has been 
 compelled to define its position within closer lines. 
 The Nicene Creed was directed against the Arians ; 
 the Heidelberg Catechism was meant to exclude 
 Catholics, as the creed of Pius IV was meant to 
 exclude Protestants, and the Westminster Con- 
 fession the Arminians. 
 
 Jesus founded no church and consequently re- 
 quired no creed ; but at the earliest moment in 
 which the first germ of a church is discovered we 
 are inevitably faced with the dogma : extra eccle- 
 siam nulla solus. Originally all that was required 
 was an openness of mind so that the spirit of God 
 might gain an entrance ; and Paul himself in the 
 outset demanded nothing more than this. But in
 
 308 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 no long time we find him making salvation to de- 
 pend upon belief in certain doctrines : that Jesus 
 is the Lord ; that he was raised up from the dead ; 
 and, eventually, that one must have faith in a 
 theoretical explanation of the resurrection. With 
 much labour and with many devices of metaphor 
 and allegory Paul welded Christ and the church 
 into a unity. He set up justification by faith in 
 opposition to Jewish justification by works, ordi- 
 nances, and observances. He formulated a new 
 legal conception to supplant the older legalism. 
 Before the end he had furnished the church with 
 a full set of dogmatic propositions : that Jesus was 
 the Son of God, that he died and rose from the dead, 
 that he would come again in the near future, that 
 in the meantime he was sitting at the right hand 
 of God above the angels, and that he was the sub- 
 ject of all prophecy. By assent to these doctrines 
 salvation was alone to be assured. Probably the 
 writer of the Acts went too far when he ascribed 
 a vicarious value to such belief, by which a man's 
 household as well as himself might be saved. 
 
 To this Pauline doctrine — died, buried, rose 
 on the third day — the writers of the Pastoral 
 Epistles added still more debatable matter : of 
 the House of David, under Pontius Pilate, who 
 shall come to judge the c[uick and the dead. The
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 309 
 
 descent into Hades appears definitely only in the 
 First Epistle of Peter. The virgin birth, with the 
 Davidic genealogy of Mary, came into the canon 
 only in sub-apostolic times. 
 
 Concurrently with the development of dogma 
 went the firmer organization of the church to 
 make it more effective ; and as early as the date 
 of the Epistle of John the mark of the Christian 
 was already declared to be abiding in the tradi- 
 tion. The place of Jesus was forgotten. Instead 
 of reading, as we may in the first letter to the 
 Corinthians, "for other foundation can no man lay 
 than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ," we read 
 in the letter to the Ephesians, " are built upon 
 the foundation of the apostles and prophets." 
 Jesus is merely the " chief corner," and presently 
 the apostles become the " holy apostles." * 
 
 In the second century, when the Christian body 
 was growing inwardly cold, it became necessary to 
 strengthen the spiritual force by exterior bonds, 
 by the authority of the institution and of the 
 sacramental rite. The word of God then yielded 
 place to the word of the bishop. For faith in 
 Him was substituted the rule of faith ; for re- 
 pentance and piety, the sacrament ; discipline for 
 fraternal love ; and obedience for inspiration. 
 
 1 £ph. iii, 5.
 
 310 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 The average man will take the easiest way ; 
 and reliance upon an official or a church is much 
 easier than individual investigation of the proper 
 line of conduct. Newman chose the obvious 
 method. A more trivial instance is found in a 
 letter which Mr. Robert C. S. Bailey wrote to the 
 " Spectator," June 5th, 1909. If he were in a situ- 
 ation of difficulty, such as whether or not he 
 should dispense the elements to a " Dissenter," 
 he should "first have consulted the Bishop." 
 Accordingly, he " should have considered him- 
 self bound." 
 
 In a similar way, common men require some- 
 thing external as a guarantee for their salva- 
 tion. Hence they seize upon historic occurrences 
 and material things like blood, water, wine, 
 bread ; and eventually a figment replaces the 
 reality, as the theological interpretation of the 
 blood of Christ was substituted for the person 
 of Jesus. 
 
 Whatever we may think of the attempt of 
 Paul to find a basis for the authority of Jesus in 
 Hebrew prophecy, we cannot remain blind to the 
 fact that it saved the Old Testament for us, and 
 probably created the New. By establishing the 
 foundations of Christianity in Hebrew Scripture 
 he rescued it from those Gnostics who with only
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 311 
 
 a partial knowledge of its contents attributed its 
 authorship to Satan. 
 
 It is a reasonable subject of speculation in 
 how far we would suffer if we had been deprived 
 of an account of the Levitical ceremonial and 
 Hebraistic theology. I think the principal value 
 of it is that it has carried down to us the glo- 
 rious apostrophes, the appeals for righteousness, 
 which were made by righteous men. I do not 
 understand that the capacity to foretell the future 
 was their principal claim to consideration. All 
 the prophets of Israel did not speak the truth, 
 as Jeremiah discovered ; and Ahab consulted 
 four hundred of them, of whom all but one were 
 impostors. As old Hobbes observed, " Though 
 God can speak to a man by dreams and visions, 
 yet he obliges no man to believe he hath done so 
 to him that pretends it, who being a man may 
 err, and which is more, may lie." A translation 
 of the Hebrew text gradually took the place of 
 Jesus, and a reverence for it was carried over 
 to the Gentiles, who found in it new lessons of 
 morality and hope. The Old Testament became 
 a Christian book, and Christianity, now become 
 a book religion, must have a book of its own. 
 
 As the Apostles died, it was necessary to pre- 
 serve the tradition which they in turn had in-
 
 312 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 lierited, and out of this necessit}' arose the canon 
 of the scriptures of the New Testament. Many 
 writings extant at the formation of the canon 
 were omitted, and these omissions imply a theory 
 in the minds of the compilers of what the tradi- 
 tion was. If such a task fell to our lot in these 
 days, a different result might have been achieved. 
 We should entrust it to a committee, and there 
 might well be grave misgivings about the doc- 
 trine which should issue from its deliberations. 
 A Council, composed, we shall say, of the Mod- 
 erator of the General Assembly, the Primate of 
 England, Adolf Harnack, Auguste Sabatier, the 
 Bishop of Rome, and Newell Dwight Hillis, who 
 were charged with the duty of writing in collabo- 
 ration a life of Jesus from original and authen- 
 tic documents, and adding such other writings 
 as might be considered helpful in understanding 
 him, could scarcely be expected to accomplish 
 a finished product, no matter how sincere the 
 attempt, which would be more satisfactory than 
 that which we now possess. 
 
 The labours of these earlier compilers have not 
 escaped criticism. Luther could not see that the 
 circular letter of James to the twelve tribes was 
 anything but an epistle of straw, or that the 
 Apocalypse was more than a political pamphlet.
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 313 
 
 Zwingli condemned it utterly, and Calvin omitted 
 it from his Commentary on the Bible. Nor is 
 such criticism entirely an affair of scholarship. 
 Luther was no scholar, and yet he was a most 
 trenchant critic of the received canon. There is 
 a religious sense, as there is a musical sense, or a 
 sense for the proper arrangement of words which 
 may be found in a dictionary. It was in virtue 
 of this religious genius, and not by historical 
 research or classical learning, that Luther put 
 an end to the juridical authority of the canon, 
 and to that juristico-scholastic system of theology 
 which had grown up as a result of its interpre- 
 tation by professional divines. 
 
 If Paul himself had had a hand in the forma- 
 tion of the canon, it is entirely probable that the 
 result would have been somewhat different. In 
 his argument he says repeatedly, " It is written," 
 and we cannot find the place. In the Pastoral 
 Epistle of Jude also, there are references to 
 prophecies with which Protestants at least are 
 not furnished in their Bible. The writer of the 
 Second Epistle of Peter, who for some reason 
 incorporates in his own the earlier letter of Jude, 
 was keen enough to notice the discrepancy, and 
 carefully omitted the reference to the extra- 
 canonical books.
 
 314 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 I am not valuing more lightly than I ought the 
 results of scholarship and research. There are 
 certain aspects of Jesus, more interesting than 
 important, it is true, which we would fail entirely 
 to apprehend, did we not know that he belonged 
 to the Semitic family, that he was born at a 
 certain period in the world's history, and lived 
 in Lower Asia. By his race we shall explain the 
 non-speculative character of his mind. In virtue 
 of that, he was content to unite man with him as 
 he was united with God, and did not trouble him- 
 self or them with any theoretical explanation of 
 the process. He united man to man by the simple 
 injunction of love to one's neighbour. He knew 
 God as the son knows the father, and not by that 
 abstract knowledge after which the Greeks were 
 continually striving. He had no theory of salva- 
 tion. That was left for Paul. He had thought 
 only for the individual. Paul was concerned for 
 the church, whilst Jesus strove to free religion 
 from all entanglement with the contingent, as 
 George Tyrrell, dead too soon, so broadly de- 
 scribes his mission. The very prayer which he 
 taught to his disciples is a practical Jewish 
 prayer. The conditions under which he lived, in 
 a word the politics of Palestine, must be under- 
 stood, if one would realize how true it is that he
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 315 
 
 came in the fulness of time. To explain that, is 
 the business of the scholar. 
 
 None but Jesus could understand himself. His 
 disciples and the apostles who came after pro- 
 ceeded to offer their own explanation. In any 
 consideration of the history of early Christianity, 
 if we forget that Jesus is dead, that he no longer 
 speaks to us even through the confused intelli- 
 gence of his reporters, then we are lost. We are 
 in reality dealing with the impressions and opin- 
 ions which ignorant and sinful men entertained 
 of his nature and work ; and they have left on 
 every page of their writings evidence of how 
 sadly they misunderstood. There is not extant 
 any record made by Jesus himself or by any of 
 those who walked with him. We need not lament 
 too bitterly that these Galilean fishermen set 
 down nothing with their own hand. Writing is a 
 work of art, and no writer, however skilled, can 
 tell the truth about a person whom he does not 
 understand. By the increased authority which 
 such documents would have, we should the more 
 surely be led astray. 
 
 It is one of the little ironies of history that 
 Protestantism has become the last refuge of 
 dogma. A book-religion is written in a book once 
 for all, wherein all may read. In the Catholic
 
 316 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 church a new dogma may be promulgated at any 
 moment, which may affect the old; indeed, as late 
 as July 18th, 1870, such a dogma was added to 
 the faith. If a Protestant ask, " What is truth ? " 
 he is referred to a book. A Catholic has for 
 reply the teaching of the church, and he would 
 be a bold man who should say what the teaching 
 of the church really is, upon any given question. 
 There is nothing which the Catholic church hates 
 so much as being obliged to define or affirm 
 everything which must be believed. When a 
 dogma is wrested from her by force, she qualifies 
 it by whole and half dogmas, directions, opin- 
 ions, and doctrinal propositions, by which it is 
 rendered innocuous. The church is reluctant 
 about asking a man to believe more than is ne- 
 cessary. To a Christianity which presupposes a 
 personal experience which has an important bear- 
 ing upon disposition, conduct, and character, the 
 Catholic church has added a ritualistic Chris- 
 tianity of sacraments, ceremonial, and obedience ; 
 whilst Protestantism insists upon an intellectual 
 Christianity in which knowledge supplants faith, 
 and doctrine replaces living experience. Catho- 
 lics and Protestants are both right, and they are 
 both wrong. 
 
 To critics skulking oa the outskirts of litera-
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 317 
 
 ture, and knowing little about theology and less 
 about God, it is only too congenial a task 
 launching their clumsy shafts against phantoms. 
 Ignorant of history, they are unaware that the 
 doctrine of the three-one and the one-three was 
 of vital importance when the one-God idea was 
 struggling with polytheism ; that the tenets of 
 Arius were opposed because, if they had pre- 
 vailed, the Pantheon would again have been in- 
 troduced into the official religion of the Empire ; 
 that an acceptance of Gnosticism would have 
 dissipated into abstract thought the person of 
 Jesus; that in the contest against Montanisra it 
 was a question of order against anarchy ; that the 
 mediaeval Papacy, with all its theoretical imper- 
 fections, was on that very account the better 
 means of keeping the church together in the face 
 of barbarian conquest, of spreading civilization, 
 and carrying the spirit over the dreary wastes 
 through the thick darkness of those ages. 
 
 The value of the various theories of God was 
 incalculable in the times in which they prevailed. 
 The doctrine of the Trinity was vitally important. 
 Men had trusted so long in a multiplicity of gods, 
 that it was asking too much of them to put their 
 faith in one. They were offered a trinity of gods 
 as a compromise ; and monotheism was appeased
 
 318 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 by the suggestion that three in reality means one. 
 The attempt to steer a course between Sabellian- 
 ism, that is the consubstantial unity of the Father 
 and the Son, and Arianism, which implies that 
 the Son is not co-unbegotten with the Father and 
 unoriginate, was really a successful effort in the 
 same direction. The struggle against Gnosticism 
 was in reality an attempt to save the humanity 
 of Jesus from those who would make of him a 
 process of thought. By gathering itself together, 
 opposing, cursing, persecuting those who would 
 destroy it, the mediaeval Papacy maintained the 
 very existence of a religious organization. In ex- 
 actly the same spirit the Pastoral and Johannine 
 Epistles were directed against heretical teachers, 
 such as those at Colossae, who boasted of their 
 Jewish circumcision, their Greek philosophy, 
 and ascetic practices. 
 
 The theological devil has always been the 
 " enemy " who sows tares, who instills intellectual 
 doubts of the complete efficacy of any ecclesiasti- 
 cal system. That is the meaning of the plaintive 
 enquiry which Paul addressed to the Galatians : 
 " Am I become the enemy because I speak the 
 truth? " In this there is a fine subtlety of insight, 
 since abstract thought, detached from the reality 
 of things as they are, and carried to its absolute
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 319 
 
 conclusion, would decree not only the extinction 
 of any system, but of the race which it is intended 
 to serve. In this sure instinct lies the ultimate 
 motive for the persecution of new ideas. 
 
 A foolish and ignorant person who follows the 
 controversy which raged for four centuries be- 
 tween the homousians and the homoiusians ; the 
 pneumatomachians, Athanasians, and theopaschi- 
 tians ; between those who held to the doctrine of 
 the hypostasis and those who fastened their sal- 
 vation from hell to the exhypostasis ; between the 
 rival heresies of aphthartodoketism and phtharto- 
 latry, may suppose this is a horrible jargon taken 
 from the pages of Dean Swift. Such an one is a 
 foolish and ignorant person, because he does not 
 see that by a successful issue from these contro- 
 versies the church preserved itself and civilization 
 at the same time. To transpose these mutations 
 of theological opinion to our own time is like 
 an attempt to revive the Heptarchy. And yet 
 it is not more than two years since I read a new 
 book, — why, I cannot now say, — by a Protest- 
 ant too, upon the Christophany, the theophany, 
 the pneumatophany, the basilophany, the Satan- 
 ophany, and the pseudo-prophetophany, — words 
 which a man may read, and also write, without 
 the faintest Idea of their meaning for us.
 
 320 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 VI 
 
 The Image of erudition whicli I have created 
 out of these various shreds and scraps of learn- 
 ing, which any one may pick up at random, will 
 not in the face of this warning deceive even the 
 least experienced. It is merely a method of pre- 
 sentation which goes well with a fragmentary way 
 of thinking. I propose now to apply to present 
 conditions the considerations which have been put 
 forward. I can make no sanguine prediction as 
 to the result of my effort ; and if I am too igno- 
 rant to come to a rational conclusion, I am also 
 too obstinate to desist. 
 
 I have said that religion cannot exist without 
 at least an implied theology. It would be nearly 
 as true to say that religion cannot exist side by 
 side with theology. When theology flourishes, 
 religion fails. Every minister expelled from his 
 pulpit, or professor from his chair, for anything 
 but evil living, is a triumph for theology and a 
 defeat for religion. This contrariety of expression 
 will appear strange only to those who never get 
 near enough to the truth to see something of its 
 other side. If we could understand the paradox 
 of the world, we should be as gods and not as 
 men. " Theology has killed religion," Paul Saba-
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 321 
 
 tier laments. He is wrong. When the pressure 
 becomes too great, religion bursts theology in 
 pieces. The secret of Jesus is in the habit of los- 
 ing itself under an accumulation of theological 
 rubbish, where it remains to be re-discovered by 
 men like Paul, St. Augustine, St. Francis, and 
 Wesley. That is their value to humanity, to us. 
 Not for their theology, but because, as Professor 
 Harnack says, they remind the world that such 
 an one as Jesus once lived. In doing that they 
 supersede all systems, their own among the rest. 
 No system of theology has ever won attention 
 which did not recognize that all previous sys- 
 tems had arisen as a product and expression of 
 the experience and need of the time; and that 
 itself is vital only in so far as it reflects the life 
 in which it lives. Accordingly, theology is not 
 a catalogue of obsolete abstractions, as Newman 
 supposed it to be ; or a successful endeavour on 
 the part of men to bewilder themselves method- 
 ically, s'egarer avec methode, as Michelet says ; 
 or an attempt to find their way in a cloud of dust 
 which they themselves had raised. It is an at- 
 tempt to find out the meaning of life. If life has 
 no meaning, theology is a futile speculation about 
 nothing. When the soul has no concern for its 
 own existence, and men do not care whether life
 
 322 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 has any meaning or not, they will not care for 
 theology either. 
 
 Religion, theology, and ecclesiasticism are three 
 different things ; and neither theologians nor 
 ecclesiastics have apprehended that simple fact, 
 though it is not impossible that a man may unite 
 all three in his own person as Paul did, as Jesus 
 did not. But in Paul we miss the starved religious 
 temperament and the dryness of heart which is 
 common to ecclesiastics as a class. Their claim 
 to be considered Christians has usually been that 
 they were persecutors, whilst he had an inward 
 experience ; although he too had been an eccle- 
 siastic and a persecutor at the same time. The 
 essential thing with him was this inward change 
 by which, through the exercise of the will, a man 
 undergoes a complete and radical conversion, 
 wrests himself from the power of sin, and puts 
 himself on the side of God, with a new light in 
 the eyes and fresh courage in the heart. In this 
 Paul was of the mind of Jesus and of all religious 
 men. It was to this experience Luther appealed. 
 That is also the meaning of Wesley's doctrine of 
 grace, by which the will is renewed and faith 
 aroused. It is the meaning, too, of assurance of 
 justification, which is the knowledge that all 
 inner discord is at an end throujrh the attain-
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 323 
 
 ment of peace in God, joy in Him, and love to 
 all men. Erasmus describes this experience in a 
 word : " The sum of religion is peace." 
 
 Paul's theology can be understood only if it is 
 read in that light which shined round about him 
 as he journeyed from Jerusalem to Damascus. 
 It is merely an attempt to elucidate the mystery 
 of simplicity, and continually he breaks away 
 from his argument to enforce the new command- 
 ment : God is love, God loved the world, Love one 
 another, We love Him because He first loved us, 
 Be ye followers of God as dear children, walking 
 in love as God loved you. That was the essen- 
 tial of his preaching. He must have been con- 
 scious of the many fallacies in his own theology 
 when he turned upon it with the contemptuous 
 admission : " Though I speak with the tongues 
 of men and of angels, and have not love, I am 
 become as sounding brass, or clanging cymbals." 
 
 The centre of Paul's theology was personal 
 religious experience, but he was willing to rein- 
 force it with objective proofs, with theories and 
 texts, conceptions and conclusions. Jesus was 
 not. He was content to live. Also to those noble 
 heathen, the Stoics, personal salvation was the 
 prime concern, and the ethical conception of 
 moral duties was built upon that. In this there
 
 324 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 is a warning to theologians, not to show overmuch 
 zeal for the last two elements of that trinity, 
 religion, theology, and the church, and too little 
 for the first. If all theologians had remembered 
 that warning, the world would have been spared 
 much misery. 
 
 By means of theology the collective spirit is 
 brought to bear upon the individual, and it pre- 
 serves the reflections of past generations upon 
 their religious experience. But when it becomes 
 cold in religious temperament, it not only puts 
 forward the common and collective spirit as a 
 more complete manifestation of the divine than 
 the spirit of the individual, but it fails to see 
 that this communized and collective spirit which 
 unifies all religious experience is not final. It 
 puts forward the ideas and institutions of a 
 particular age as a changeless and infallible 
 rule. 
 
 The worst possible preparation for the ministry 
 of God is a course of instruction confined to any 
 one of the many systems of theology which have 
 gained credence. It fixes the student's mind and 
 encourages him to believe that he is in possession 
 of the truth. He fails to apprehend that all the- 
 ologies are one theology, and that his little bit is 
 only a partial truth at best, and at worst a false-
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 325 
 
 hood. It is exactly comparable with history. One 
 cannot know any without knowing all. 
 
 It was only in his letters that Paul gave vent 
 to his theological fancies ; but he never intended 
 that those casual epistles should be bound together 
 in a book, as a part of the word of God. In his 
 preaching he said little of dogmas and creeds; 
 and those who urge us to leave them in the back- 
 ground or postpone their consideration till some 
 more convenient season go too far, and do not go 
 far enough. They must explain their meaning in 
 the light of the time in which they were created, 
 and the sense in which they are now disci-edited, 
 or not mention them at all. 
 
 The common expression is that a man may 
 reject the Confession of Faith on the ground that 
 it is argumentative and unsentimental ; and the 
 Athanasian Creed on the ground that it is a non- 
 sympathetic forgery, and yet be entitled to the 
 designation of Christian. This is a valuable con- 
 cession ; but I should rather say that a man who 
 did accept these compendiums of doctrine as a 
 complete revelation of the truth was not a Chris- 
 tian. He might be a persecutor ; but that is not, 
 in these days, held to be sufficient warrant, any 
 more than it was in the time of Saul of Tarsus. 
 
 It is the business of theology to help people in
 
 326 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 their efforts to believe what they have always be- 
 lieved, by making the transference of thought to 
 new ideas so easy that they do not become aware 
 that the old is entirely replaced by the new, as a 
 good bee-keeper would transfer his swarm to a 
 new hive, when the old had become overcrowded 
 or infected. In this the theologians of our 
 generation have failed us. They have allowed the 
 people to scatter in the highway, which is not 
 a favourite resort for the spirit of religion ; or, 
 like obdurate mariners, they held their course too 
 long and cast away the ship. The history of 
 religion must take account of the continuity of 
 human experience. Christianity itself is merely a 
 phase of human life, and the various forms under 
 which we see it are merely phases of Christianity. 
 This is a business with which religious men of the 
 second class — those who are not really poets and 
 creators — may profitably occupy themselves, to 
 establish the identity of the new with the old, and 
 the unity of the present with the past, to bring 
 present knowledge into harmony with old sur- 
 mise, and bind the ages each to each in piety. 
 
 It is a work of necessity and not of piety alone 
 to save the old theology by transforming its mean- 
 ing into terms agreeable to the modern mind. In 
 this sense theology is the most modern, the most
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 327 
 
 advancing, the most vital of all sciences. And I 
 employ the word " science " with due delibera- 
 tion, having full knowledge of all that is implied 
 by the word to the straitest sect of the scientists. 
 
 Theology must be rewritten continually, and 
 that in terms of poetry. A new symbolism must 
 be created. The unknown author of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews has shown us the way. The 
 burden of his song is that the light of the know- 
 ledge of the glory of God, which had shined in 
 men's hearts, was contained in earthen vessels. 
 These might perish, but the treasure remained. 
 The old for him had passed away. The mystical 
 powers of a hereditary priesthood had become too 
 vague and shadowy. A meticulous observance of 
 the Jewish law no longer sufficed for the needs of 
 the spirit. He required a stronger "consolation," 
 and fled for refuge to lay hold upon the new hope 
 which was set before him. Yet he does not fail to 
 bear in pious remembrance that God had spoken 
 at sundry previous times, and in divers manners. 
 
 This was the task which Immanuel Kant also 
 endeavoured to perform for his generation. It has 
 not yet been adequately done for ours. But in his 
 day the ground had not been sufficiently cleared 
 for that edifice of religion, theology, and church 
 which he strove to erect within the bounds of
 
 328 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 reason. His new reading, as interpreted by Pflei- 
 derer, of the old conception of justification by 
 atonement will serve as an illustration of what 
 may be done by an allegorical method of exegesis : 
 
 All speculation begins with the origin of evil. 
 Paul had two theories, neither of which is satis- 
 factory, and the one contradicts the other. Kant 
 traces it to an "intelligible act of freedom," and 
 leaves it at that. The problem now is to transform 
 an evil disposition into a good one, to awaken in 
 the mind the idea of moral perfection by contem- 
 plation of it as expressed in the person of Jesus. 
 But the real object of religious faith is not neces- 
 sarily a historical Jesus, but a humanity so well- 
 pleasing to God that we may conceive of it as 
 having come down from heaven. He who believes 
 in this idea and lets it govern his life has then 
 a rightness of disposition, in virtue of which the 
 minor imperfections of humanity may be consid- 
 ered accidental and transitory. In the daily suf- 
 fei'ing of self-discipline, obedience, and patience, 
 the new man suffers vicariously for the old. This 
 avoids the idea of one who by a process of substi- 
 tution suffers for all, an event which cannot occur 
 in the sphere of morality. 
 
 In the mind of Kant the old things had passed 
 away. What he did for the conception of the
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 329 
 
 atonement was done for the old doctrine of sin 
 and salvation by Schleierraaclier, who, in addition 
 to moral earnestness, possessed a finer spiritual 
 pei'ception by which he was the more able to adapt 
 and assimilate, and so succeeded even better in 
 the reconstruction of theology than the over- 
 intellectual Kant or the insensible, historical 
 Herder who preceded him. 
 
 Every system of religion which did not event- 
 ually lose itself in the sand has organized itself 
 into the life of the past, and by a process of trans- 
 formation has secured an orderly development and 
 permanent growth. The history of all religions is 
 merely a record of this amalgamation of the new 
 with the old. When a race of Poseidon worship- 
 pers settled amongst the worshippers of Athena 
 they identified an Athenian male deity, already 
 existing, with their own god, and accorded to both 
 a joint worship in a common temple. The early 
 church accepted the primitive Semitic idea of the 
 common meal in which the tribal god had his 
 share ; but they left it in a condition of fluidity, so 
 that the god might at all future times represent 
 the embodiment or personification of the experi- 
 ence which the tribe accumulated, and of the in- 
 creasing wisdom which arises out of an enlarged 
 experience. This wise measure left them free to
 
 330 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 incorporate into tlieir observance the secondary 
 idea of a sacrifice to win back the favour and 
 avert the anger of an absent god who — so they 
 were informed by a growing consciousness of right 
 and wrong — had every reason to be displeased. 
 And so the Christian sacrament became a magi- 
 cal means for maintaining unbroken the religious 
 unity of the race. The stream of heathenism long 
 ran side by side with the Hebrew religion. Finally 
 they merged, and heathenism was swallowed up, 
 but to the end it gave a tinge and tendency to 
 the predominant current. Hebraism lost itself in 
 Christianity, and the great work of St. Paul was 
 the blending and direction of the new tide. 
 
 The weakness of Protestantism is that it is 
 without a theology. The foundation of the old is 
 shaken, and most sensible persons are agreed that 
 it is time to stop erecting any further superstruc- 
 ture upon it. The utmost ever claimed was that 
 this foundation was probably safe. The utmost 
 now claimed is that it is probably unsafe, but 
 may do well enough. We cannot do without reli- 
 gion. Religion cannot do without a church. A 
 church cannot do without a theology. The theo- 
 logy which we have is unreal, and the church is 
 unreal too. All men have come to see that an 
 outworn theology will not do for a living church.
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 331 
 
 There is no use putting new wine into decayed 
 bottles, or adding new cloth to an old garment. 
 The bottles have already burst. The rent is grow- 
 ing worse daily. Nor will the old phrases suffice : 
 accept a creed, receive the sacraments. Even the 
 terms, "lost," "saved," "washed in the blood of 
 the Lamb," fail to appeal. 
 
 Protestantism has forgotten that the clumsy 
 weapon which Paul forged for the destruction of 
 the two giants, Judaism and Gnosticism, is inef- 
 fectual against the nimble enemy of to-day. In 
 lesser matters also the situation is changed. He 
 had definite situations to deal with, and his argu- 
 ment is chiefly of historical importance. There is 
 now no question of eating meat which has been 
 offered to idols, and afterwards finds its way into 
 the markets. If such food were procurable upon 
 favourable terms, we should enjoy it, without 
 much fear of the demons who were assumed to 
 have entered into it. The matter of the circum- 
 cision does not trouble us. We have solved to our 
 satisfaction the problem of women speaking in 
 church, and they have decided for themselves the 
 clothing which they shall wear. Our views of 
 marriage and divorce are fixed. The payment of 
 our ministers is iu many instances established by 
 law, and in all by custom. There is some order in
 
 332 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 our church services. We do not anticipate daily 
 the Parousia in the red morning or the golden 
 evening. We are not looking continually that 
 the door of heaven may open and the last trum- 
 pet sound. We do not expect that those of us who 
 are now living will be caught up into glory. We 
 are sure that we will descend into the grave as 
 our fathers have descended. 
 
 These circumstances no longer exist, but others 
 of equal importance have come into existence, and 
 upon these our theologians must make up their 
 minds. They must decide whether they will accept 
 the statement of an unknown Semitic writer upon 
 the origin of created beings, and the burden of sin 
 which we lie under, or the general teaching of sci- 
 ence, that the depravity of men is due not to a fall 
 from primitive purity, but to their late emergence 
 from the ape. They must interpret for us the mean- 
 ing of this, that the further back we go, the more 
 impure the race appears, and that a true type of 
 the primitive man is not that pair "of noble shape, 
 God-like, erect and tall, with native honour clad 
 in native majesty, the lords of all," but the Tas- 
 manian natives of a hundred years ago with their 
 short stature, long arms, black, hairy skins, and 
 naked bodies, employing for household needs flint 
 scrapers and knives, and for defence a wooden
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 333 
 
 elub hardened by fire, which was grasped by the 
 great toe and dragged along until necessity for 
 its employment arose. 
 
 The material for a new theology — which after 
 all will not be new — is ready at hand. It only 
 requires a new saint to embody the spirit of reli- 
 gion and a new theologian to provide a gnosis. 
 Until that event arrives, probably the best that 
 can be done is for each one of us to endeavour to 
 be as religious as he can, with a faith that out of 
 this communized feeling will arise in due season 
 a new theology and a new church. 
 
 I am quite well aware that there is a thing 
 which is called by the specific term New Theo- 
 logy. It aims at being scientific, observing facts, 
 and making deductions. The ground of enquiry 
 has been transferred from the mind of God to the 
 minds of men. Its exponents are busy investigating 
 the operation within the individual of those influ- 
 ences which come from without. They perceive 
 that religious experience is a fact, that emotions 
 are produced by it, and that conduct is influenced 
 by them for good. From this effect they predi- 
 cate a cause, and then proceed to investigate 
 the nature of it. Conversion is a reality, as real 
 as any other human experience. Prayer and public 
 devotion have their results in patience, pureness,
 
 334 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 long-suffering, kindness, unfeigned love. From 
 these effects certain deductions are made as to 
 the source from which they come, and theories 
 are created about the manner in which these 
 influences are propagated. Instead of Spinoza's 
 cognitio Dei intuitiva, it offers us proof of the 
 sure existence of God. 
 
 Even mathematics has been pressed into the 
 service of this new and scientific theology. In the 
 " Hibbert Journal " for January, 1909, Professor 
 C. T. Keyser holds " that recent developments of 
 mathematical science, as furnishing direct insight 
 into the positive nature of the Infinite, are of the 
 greatest importance to theology." But on account 
 of natural incapacity or lack of opportunity, not 
 all persons are versed in the higher mathematics, 
 and it seems hard that they should on that account 
 be debarred from a saving knowledge of the liv- 
 ing and true God. 
 
 The earliest of these new theologians was Schlei- 
 ermacher. He demonstrated that Christian faith 
 does not consist in doctrinal propositions which 
 arise from intellectual reflection upon the subject, 
 but is " a condition of devout feeling, a fact of in- 
 ward experience, an object which may be observed 
 and described." True its results may be observed 
 and described ; but no one can describe an experi-
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 335 
 
 ence which he himself has not experienced ; and 
 it does not necessarily follow that, even if a man 
 should undergo such an experience, he would have 
 either the desire or the capacity to give an account 
 which would be satisfactory to himself or intelli- 
 gible to others. The poet-books are filled chiefly 
 with observations and descriptions of the mutual 
 passion of the male and the female ; but in spite 
 of all this information, there is an element of sur- 
 prise when that passion is first felt by the indi- 
 vidual. I suppose that is as true of the poets and 
 theologians as of the most diligent reader of their 
 works. 
 
 In this new theology also there is fallacy. 
 Search for abstract proof begins in doubt and ends 
 in despair. " Fear God " has made many men 
 happy: "proofs" of the existence of God have 
 made many men atheists. At one time I possessed 
 a sure conviction that two and two make four ; 
 but in an evil moment I allowed myself to become 
 interested in a controversy upon the subject be- 
 tween Professor Taylor and a colleague. Now I 
 am in despair that I shall ever attain to a finality 
 of opinion upon the subject. In less rational mood 
 I have a vision that the old formula is sufficiently 
 accurate for the practical purpose of adjusting 
 my relation between the man whom I owe and
 
 336 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 the man who owes me ; that, in short, it is adequate 
 for purposes of conduct. This new investigation 
 into the operation of influences which are assumed 
 to come from without is in reality a spiritualized 
 psychology conducted in a spiritual laboratory, 
 to employ the striking phrase of Mr. Justice 
 Archibald. 
 
 In so far as I am able to inform myself, these 
 theologians have not yet advanced beyond the stage 
 of human psychology and psychical research. 
 Great hopes were entertained that by " laboratory 
 methods " the nature of the soul could be deter- 
 mined, and from that the nature of God inferred. 
 They have attained to quite definite results. By 
 an ingenious arrangement of a bed on a light 
 framework supported by very delicately balanced 
 beam-scales upon which a moribund patient was 
 placed for three hours and forty minutes, and 
 allowed to die, it was determined that the weight 
 of the soul was three-fourths of an ounce. The 
 report is quite specific : " Coincident with death 
 the beam end dropped with an audible stroke, 
 hitting against the lower, limiting bar, and re- 
 maining there with no rebound " ; and yet it is 
 questionable if our knowledge of the soul is much 
 enhanced by these elaborate mechanical contriv- 
 ances.
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 337 
 
 These are pretensions, like the pretensions of 
 Kant, that with mortal foot he could pass beyond 
 the gate of human experience, and they are as fal- 
 lacious as the political pretensions of Louis XIV. 
 The fate of the king has ever since been a warn- 
 ing to politicians. The fate of the philosopher 
 should be a warning to new theologians. There 
 is nothing in this new theology to induce one 
 to abandon the original contention that God is 
 not apprehended by any device of the intellect. 
 To seek to do so is a surrender to the material- 
 istic idea that the scientific spirit broods over the 
 universe, and that by searching we can find out 
 God. This vain attempt to convert religion into 
 terms of logic is not being made, I admit, by 
 irreligious men, but by many a fine spirit follow- 
 ing the religious sense under the delusion that it 
 is following the understanding. 
 
 I do not think that the new theologians have 
 met with results sufficient to encourage them in 
 this research beyond the limits of human experi- 
 ence. Within those limits they have observed and 
 classified ; but I do not think they have made any 
 clearer the mystery of personal religious experi- 
 ence, by which the individual escapes from the 
 domination of transitory things. " Not surely of 
 deliberate effort of thought," says George Gissing
 
 338 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 again, " does a man grow wise. The trutlis of life 
 are discovered by us at moments unforeseen. Some 
 gracious influence descends upon the soul, touch- 
 ing it to an emotion which, we know not how, 
 the mind transmutes into thought. This can only 
 happen in a calm of the senses, a surrender of 
 the whole being to passionless contemplation." 
 
 I understood when I went into the sanctuary 
 of God, is the way in which the Hebrew psalm- 
 ist expresses the method of search by which the 
 mystery may be solved, and even yet in the twi- 
 light of a church the word " God " may acquire 
 an intelligible meaninsr which is missed in the 
 clear light and frigid atmosphere of reason. It 
 boots little for a man to know that the psalm in 
 which this expression occurs is a psalm of Asaph, 
 and that Asaph signifies a collection of religious 
 poems which were put together in Babylonia in 
 the early Greek period, if his knowledge does not 
 result in some amplification of the statement with 
 which the poem ends : " It is good for me to draw 
 near to God." 
 
 No system of religion but ours has ever pro- 
 ceeded upon the assumption that the mystery of 
 God could be investigated, or that it was desira- 
 ble that it should be investigated; and we may 
 content ourselves with the assurance that the new
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 339 
 
 investigators will not pluck out the heart of it. 
 " Hallowed be thy name " expressed the attitude 
 of Jesus. " Thou shalt not take his name in vain " 
 was the injunction to the Hebrews. The Romans 
 never mentioned their household gods : and the 
 "holy things" of the Greeks were regarded as 
 too holy to be looked upon. With fine reticence 
 the writers of the first two Gospels omit to men- 
 tion the last words of their master as being too 
 sacred for utterance. This attitude of reverence 
 is not an artificial one. The peasantry forbear 
 to name the "little people" by whom they are 
 surrounded. This restraint of speech enters even 
 into the human relationship : it is a mark of vul- 
 garity of mind when a man mentions the name 
 of his beloved dead. 
 
 It may well be that the present condition of 
 bewilderment is due to the discovery not yet 
 made fully conscious to us that the Hebrew idea 
 in Christianity is alien to our race. All Semitic 
 faiths are based upon revelation. The Jews never 
 believed anything which they could understand. 
 They did not desire a theory. That was left for 
 the Gentile world, of which we are. The Greeks 
 demanded a philosophy of God as the Scotch re- 
 quire a logic. Doubtless it would be better if all 
 peoples would adopt the Scotch practice instead
 
 340 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 of going to their own place in their own way ; but 
 to suppose that they will be amenable to reason 
 would indicate an excess of proselytizing zeal. 
 The Scotch mind demands a kind of theological 
 ephemeris, as a mariner requires a table of calcu- 
 lated positions and motions of the heavenly bodies 
 from day to day, or at regular intervals. Indeed 
 the "Gifford Lectures" are a crude attempt to 
 determine the status of God for a given period. 
 Of course scientific accuracy is impossible, as 
 the personal equation of the lecturers is so vari- 
 able, and the data themselves are so veiled in 
 obscurity. 
 
 God is in heaven, therefore all is right with 
 the world. That is the conception which we have 
 borrowed from the Jews, to replace the older idea 
 in which our race was nourished, that God is on 
 earth. Between these two is fixed the gulf which 
 separates West and East. The religion of the East 
 is a manifestation of that inward light of which 
 Mr. Hall Fielding writes so charmingly, and not 
 of a great light which came down from heaven. 
 It says this thing is true as an artist should say, 
 " I feel this curve is right or this line should fall 
 thus," and not because some one — Moses, Jesus, 
 Paul, Luther, Calvin, Mrs. Eddy — said so, or 
 because it is written in a book.
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 341 
 
 This scientific theology at its best is in reality 
 a revival of the method of Buddha, who declared 
 that he had found a way which, if a man would 
 follow, leads to serenity and peace. Come and see, 
 he said, what God hath done for my soul ; but our 
 new theologians are prone to weary us by telling 
 at second-hand what happened in some other per- 
 son's soul, and how it came about. It is question- 
 able if they appreciate what an entire reversal of 
 Christianity this experimental method is, reason- 
 ing from the known to the unknown, instead of 
 from the unknowable to the known, taking a stand 
 within the experience, instead of arguing down- 
 ward from a postulate. 
 
 And yet, whatever the system, it becomes cor- 
 rupt in time. The caste and ceremonial of modern 
 Hinduism is a degeneration from that pure reli- 
 gion which arose out of a life that was pure and 
 free, a public life that was brave and patriotic, a 
 private life that was lovely and happy, an intel- 
 lectual life that was learned. In precisely the same 
 way the teaching of Jesus was transformed into an 
 ecclesiastical Christianity, furnished forth by Paul 
 and his followers with a full equipment of belief 
 in original sin, vicarious sacrifices, and atonement. 
 His fine freedom gave place to a government by 
 bishops, deacons, and their subordinates ; sacra-
 
 342 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 ments took the place of the reality which they 
 were designed to show forth ; simplicity and aus- 
 terity were vitiated by a spirit of compromise in 
 which righteousness was made subordinate to 
 human convenience. It required nearly five hun- 
 dred years for the Brahmins to make a monopoly 
 of religion. The followers of Jesus did their work 
 in less than two hundred. Indeed the original en- 
 thusiasm, the faith in God, the faith in love, the 
 faith in the impossible even, in virtue of which the 
 spirit casts away its cares, and goes with trust and 
 confidence and serenity, had evaporated as early 
 as the time of writing the Epistles to Timothy 
 and Titus. So early as that, faith in Jesus had 
 become a creed; devotion to him a Christology; 
 the coming of the kingdom an egotistic immor- 
 tality ; prophecy, a textual exegesis ; ministers, 
 clerics; prayers, litanies; the community, a 
 ceremonial ecclesiasticism ; and the Gospel an 
 unyielding system of legality. 
 
 VII 
 
 Those who are specifically engaged in the ser- 
 vice of religion would do well to realize that there 
 is a diversity of gifts. When Father Simon was 
 asked by the Archbishop of Paris what he was 
 doing to prepare for the higher orders of the
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 343 
 
 priesthood he replied, "Monseigneur, I am criti- 
 cizing the Bible." If the same question were put 
 to a Protestant minister to-day, he might reply- 
 truthfully, and in the belief that he was follow- 
 ing the proper course, " I am engaged in the 
 higher criticism." 
 
 This criticism is an affair for scholars. A man 
 may be religious without being a scholai-, but 
 he cannot be a scholar without being religious. 
 When a man who is merely religious and without 
 other equipment meddles with scholarship, he is 
 sure to say something foolish. The best he can do 
 is to stand aside and leave scholars to their task, 
 and when that is finished, seize upon the results 
 for the enrichment of his mind. He may pray for 
 them, but he should not interfere. The business of 
 scholars is to break down all systems of theology, 
 to resolve them into their elements, to disclose the 
 facts of experience which they contain, to put aside 
 the temporary and the accidental, casting down 
 the things that can be shaken, so that the things 
 which cannot be shaken may endure in their power 
 and beauty. 
 
 I think that most persons are in agreement that 
 no age or race can contrive a theology which will 
 be adequate for the next age or another race. We 
 may now go so far as to say that no man can con-
 
 M4 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 trive a theology which will be entirely adequate 
 for any other man. Each one must make a theo- 
 logy for himself, which will be a thing living and 
 changing day by day, as his experience enlarges 
 and his knowledge grows. It is possible that this 
 will appear as a daring experiment to the theologi- 
 cal mind, which takes it for granted that the non- 
 theological mind is incapable of comprehending 
 any head of doctrine ; and that since all attempts 
 at understanding are hopeless, nothing remains 
 but a passive acceptance. 
 
 It is the business of theologians to create out of 
 these individual experiences, their own included, 
 a systematized theory of God as a working formula 
 for the church, which preserves and transmits 
 to posterity the record of God's dealing with men. 
 The first lesson they must learn is not to take 
 their business too seriously. The next lesson they 
 must learn is to take it seriously enough. They 
 must strive with all their might to find out God, 
 and at the same time be fully convinced that they 
 cannot formularize the idea within the limits of 
 any dogma. 
 
 It is a fundamental fallacy that a theology can 
 be created unless the spirit of religion inspires, 
 or that either can endure without an ecclesiastical 
 organization. And yet, on the other hand, the let-
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 345 
 
 ter kills the spirit ; the priest betrays the church 
 aucl destroys the prophet ; and the theologian 
 slays the saint. As if the matter were not suf- 
 ficiently complicated, there is this further to be 
 said : that religion is served by self-interest, which 
 itself lies at the foundation of the church, and 
 eventually destroys it. 
 
 A church is in one sense a habitation for men, 
 and in another sense which completes the idea, 
 a repository for religion, a means of carrying 
 out God's work in the world by the perfecting of 
 the individual. It is an edifice constructed by 
 human hands. Like all works of finite intelli- 
 gence, it is subject to time and chance. Every 
 system of human contrivance has in itself the 
 seeds of decay. Death goes hand in hand with 
 life, and it is merely a question of time which 
 shall prevail. Therefore we need not wonder at 
 the condition of degradation into which at times 
 the church has fallen. 
 
 Let us admit to the uttermost these mutations 
 of decay. The prophet Jeremiah lived in one of 
 those periods, and the twelfth century yields an- 
 other illustration, when Innocent III in the Bull 
 dated June 8th, 1198, declared that only fire and 
 sword could destroy and save. Benefices were put 
 up for sale to the highest bidder ; prelates were
 
 346 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 bought by fees ; clerics resorted to any means to 
 make provision for their illegitimates ; monas- 
 teries added to their other attractions women like 
 those who were evil in Judaea; priests paid to 
 their bishops a fee known as a collageum, in re- 
 turn for the poor privilege of keeping a harlot, 
 which proves the simplicity of the priests as well 
 as the avarice of the bishops. All these things 
 are contained, not in the book of the martyrs, 
 but in the successive bulls against assassination, 
 incest, adultery. Religion was lost in magical 
 formulae, in liturgical ceremonies. Yet it emerged 
 again, and men were drawn to it by the marvel- 
 lous atti'activeness of the simplicity and austerity 
 of the Povarello, the poor little man of Assisi. 
 
 To be quite comprehensive, one might refer to 
 the church in England in the fifteenth century, 
 about which the Corporation of London has just 
 published some details. In " Letter Book I," 
 covering the period 1400-1422, there is a record 
 of nearly seventy cases of adultery which were 
 brought before the Mayor and Aldermen, and 
 nearly fifty of them concerned the clergy. To be 
 still more comprehensive, I might refer to the 
 same church under its altered constitution, and 
 to the Presbyterian church as well, when Wesley 
 and his followers revolted against the lifeless for-
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 347 
 
 mallty of the one and the deadly fatalism of the 
 other. Yet out of these churches arose by the 
 means of men trained in them the " rediscovery 
 of the love of God," as set forth in the five uni- 
 versal of Methodism, so well catalogued by Dr. 
 Workman : that all men need salvation ; that all 
 men may be saved ; that all may know themselves 
 to be saved ; that all should declare their salva- 
 tion ; and that all may attain to holiness. 
 
 As the spirit decays, its place is taken by the 
 institution. That is a law. It is a law also in 
 physiology that in the process of degeneration 
 the finer tissue is replaced by a hard, resistant 
 substance, lest a worse thing befall. In a more 
 purely pathological condition the decaying tissue 
 is replaced by a new growth which in turn breaks 
 down and destroys the organism. This cancer is 
 the result of deficient vitality and not the cause. 
 The history of that organization which was ori- 
 ginally designed for the Christianizing of young 
 men yields an excellent illustration of this tend- 
 ency to replace the spirit by the institution. In 
 the outset its whole energy was expended upon the 
 spiritual salvation of those to whom it appealed. 
 To-day its claim for support is based upon the 
 humanitarian plea, that it makes young men effi- 
 cient not by revealing to them the mystery of
 
 348 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 God and of goodness in the world, but by mak- 
 ing them more accomplished in the use of their 
 intelligence and of their muscles, especially of 
 those which have to do with the operation of a 
 writing-machine. 
 
 The whole controversy turns upon the question, 
 What is the chief end of man ? To this also there 
 are two answers. Whether shall it be to seek 
 first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, 
 with a surety that all other things needful will 
 be added, or to seek first for the things which are 
 imagined to be of immediate necessity ? In this lies 
 the distinction between the old evangelicism which 
 made men dissatisfied with their character, and the 
 new institutionalism which makes them dissatis- 
 fied with their surroundings. The one was the 
 method of Jesus : the other is the method of " prac- 
 tical Christianity." Both cannot be right. Upon 
 this question the church must make up its mind. 
 
 The belief that God created the church by a 
 more specific act of Providence than that by which 
 He created the world is merely an assumption of 
 ecclesiastics, who are actuated by the laudable de- 
 sire to magnify their own office. Even Jesus, when 
 he was on earth, did not find himself especially 
 brother to the ecclesiastic. He dissented from the 
 church which he found in existence, and took no
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 349 
 
 measures to establish a new one. He initiated no 
 ordinances. He did not baptize. He instituted no 
 sacrament. The comparison of the broken bread 
 with his broken body and the red wine with his 
 shed blood was a parable, not a sacrament, as the 
 pouring out of the ointment by the woman was an 
 emblem of his burial. He left behind him merely 
 an enthusiasm in the hearts of those who had been 
 so closely drawn to his person, and they, with a 
 sure instinct that all enthusiasm is evanescent, 
 proceeded to secure it within the limits of a church. 
 With an equally sure instinct they were resolved 
 that no religious fact should be lost. 
 
 In periods of great theological dissolution like 
 the present there is always a slackening of eccle- 
 siastical organization ; but it is not the distinctive 
 mark of a religious man that he stays away from 
 church. In the city of New York, in the year 
 1905, according to Dr. Laidlaw's estimate in the 
 " Federation of Churches," there were 1,071,981 
 Protestants who attended no place of public wor- 
 ship ; and we are informed that 80 per cent of the 
 Jews are alienated from their own synagogues. 
 These are not religious above all men. It is a poor 
 retort of Protestants that the area of "Romish 
 darkness " is also diminishing ; and they are wel- 
 come to such ground for comfort and boasting as
 
 350 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 they can find in the startling statistics which Mr. 
 McCabe supplies of the decay of the Catholic 
 church. All churches are one church, and if the 
 Catholic church in France has diminished in fifty 
 years from thirty millions in a population of thirty- 
 six millions to six millions in a population of thirty- 
 nine millions, the gain is not to Protestantism or 
 to Christianity either. Men do not willingly or of 
 set purpose refrain from the exercise of the reli- 
 gious consciousness, nor do they deliberately ab- 
 stain from the assembling of themselves together. 
 They stay away from church either because their 
 intelligence is offended, or because they receive 
 no pleasurable stimulation of their religious sense, 
 — for the same reason that sensible men do not 
 go to a theatre which does not stimulate a feeling 
 for music or dramatic action. 
 
 There are two ways by which men have striven 
 to find God : by magic, divination, sorcery, super- 
 stition, rites, and ceremonies ; and experimentally 
 in the heart. The former is the way of the eccle- 
 siastics ; the latter is the way of Jesus. And yet 
 one must not say that these two methods are 
 mutually contradictory or even entirely distinct. 
 The celebration of certain rites arouses a genu- 
 ine religious emotion in the minds of persons to 
 whom they are utterly meaningless ; and a religious
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 351 
 
 atmosphere is created which in turn influences 
 persons to whom those rites are superstitions. In 
 many places it is customary for a man to raise his 
 hat as he passes a church wherein is exposed — 
 as he believes, and as some hundred millions of 
 his fellow-men believe — the body of the Lord. 
 An unbelieving companion, if he is not a churl, 
 will join in this little act of respect, as he would 
 to a woman who was known to his companion but 
 not to him ; and if he is not entirely insensible 
 to the finer emotions, he will experience a faint 
 religious feeling. 
 
 Again, a person may be convinced that God 
 can exist very well without the offering of human 
 praise or prayer ; and yet if he practise the repe- 
 tition of the Lord's prayer in a mechanical way as 
 a device against sleeplessness, he is very liable to 
 experience a sensation of comfort. It is a law that 
 all stimuli must be increased in Intensity accord- 
 ing to the frequency with which they are used, 
 and it is quite conceivable that these two little acts 
 of adoration and prayer might lead to frequent 
 attendance upon public worship, where the sight 
 of others under the influence of religious emotion 
 would produce its effect by contagion. Upon this 
 matter no one is entitled to offer an opinion until 
 he has made experiment of it.
 
 352 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 What man, unless he is hardened by habitual 
 and violent jjrotesting, can remain unmoved in 
 the presence of a Catholic woman praying for her 
 dead? If it is his own dead for whom she prays, 
 he is quite capable of discarding his Protestantism 
 to adopt the tenets of a church which encourages 
 so pious and comforting a practice. If it were not 
 for death, there would be no religion ; and religion 
 will endure so long as death prevails. Each man 
 for himself must put himself in a proper relation 
 to the surroundings in which he finds himself. As 
 the young preacher says, he must be " rightened " ; 
 and as soon as he gets himself thus rightened, he 
 experiences a feeling which is called religious. He 
 behaves differently because he is rightened and 
 not because he has the feeling. One can simulate 
 a feeling unconsciously and honestly. Electrical 
 stimulation makes a blind man think he sees. He 
 has merely the feeling of seeing, but in reality 
 he sees not. Even if a man had the real reli- 
 gious feeling without being rightened, it would not 
 much amend his conduct ; but the artificial crea- 
 tion of an emotion will bring about the condition 
 of mind from which that emotion normally arises. 
 That is the true explanation of the value of pri- 
 vate devotion and public worship. 
 
 Protestantism as a means of ministerins: to this
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 353 
 
 human need for religious observance has failed. 
 It may do what it likes to arouse the deeper emo- 
 tions by decking its pulpits with flowers and with 
 monstrous fruits on its days of thanksgiving. It 
 may enrich its music and colour its windows. It 
 may contrive a liturgy, as a beaver in a zoologi- 
 cal garden attempts by reason of a deep instinct 
 to construct a dam with the poor material he can 
 find. It is merely competing in its decoration with 
 the agricultural fair, in its music with the concert, 
 in its liturgy with the Catholic church. One who 
 has heard the silver trumpets at the papal Mass, 
 where even the sub-deacon is a cardinal, and the 
 Gospel is read in Greek, and has seen the Pontiff 
 breaking at the altar and communicating at his 
 seat — because Christ broke the bread at Emmaus, 
 but eat before the disciples at Jerusalem, and 
 suffered his Passion in the public gaze — will 
 understand the futility of these little Protestant 
 devices for appealing to the heart of the race. 
 
 The trouble with the Protestant minister is this : 
 he does not know what he is. It is quite open for 
 any man to choose whether he will attend a ser- 
 vice at which a priest or a minister officiates, 
 whether he will be a Catholic or a Protestant. 
 The Catholic church is served by priests. The 
 essence of its system is sacrifice, the sacrifice of
 
 354 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 the Mass, by which the body and blood of Jesus 
 are sacrificed anew every time the service is per- 
 formed. But Protestantism fails to apprehend, or 
 rather denies, that anything really does happen. 
 In the religious rites of the Hebrews, of the 
 Greeks, of the Komans, actual sacrifice of beasts 
 or of human beings was made by the priest. In 
 the Catholic church there is at least a theoretical 
 sacrifice ; but Protestantism is the negation of the 
 sacrificial idea ; and therefore in it there is no 
 place for the priest. 
 
 The weakness of Protestantism to-day is due 
 to the fact that its ministrants are not entirely 
 convinced that they no longer retain any priestly 
 quality: and for lack of that conviction, they have 
 not wholly developed the quality of minister. Be- 
 ing uncertain of their vocation,they have jumped 
 to the conclusion that their business is the propa- 
 gation of ideas. That is why Protestant churches 
 are usually empty. Even if they were in pos- 
 session of ideas, it would not follow that men 
 would be drawn unto them. That is why Catholic 
 churches are always full: because they have no 
 ideas to propagate, but afford a place of calm for 
 the senses, a retreat from the world of thought, 
 an incentive to worship for which the soul yearns, 
 a stimulus for that religious emotion which suf-
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 355 
 
 fuses the whole being, and translates the world 
 of reality into the sphere of imagination. 
 
 When all theological systems have been reduced 
 to a condition of fluidity, and flux, and continuous 
 flowing, a universal church will formulate itself, 
 and all men will be drawn unto it for the sheer 
 enjoyment of losing themselves in the Infinite. 
 By the contemplation of heavenly things the 
 transitory and perishable will seem of less impor- 
 tance than they now appear to be ; and men will 
 turn from them with hatred and full purpose to 
 endeavour after a new obedience. 
 
 Religion has to do with the emotions, and an 
 emotion arises from a condition of mind. It is the 
 business of a man who is concerned specifically 
 with religion to create a condition of mind from 
 which religious emotions will arise. The tradi- 
 tional method in Protestant churches is to put 
 the people in mind of heaven or of hell. But that 
 is too coarse for these times ; and any faint sparb 
 which has been enkindled is apt to be quenched 
 by the announcement that the Dorcas Society 
 will meet on Thursday, and that the collection, 
 which it is hoped will be a liberal one, will be 
 devoted to the purposes of Foreign Missions, even 
 at a moment when one is yearning for a mission 
 to himself.
 
 356 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 The ability to induce a condition of mind out 
 of which religious emotions will arise is not given 
 to every man. That is reserved in the highest de- 
 gree to men of religious genius such as Augustine 
 and Wesley were; yet the ministry can justify 
 itself only by conveying to men a call which will 
 be effectual for their awakening, so that they may 
 be enlightened as to their actual condition, and 
 persuaded to improve it. There is no universal 
 formula which will be equally applicable to all 
 men. To one Jesus said. Sell all that thou hast ; 
 to another, Follow me ; to another, Thou art not 
 far from the kingdom. There are many ways in 
 which a man may be awakened — by the crack 
 of a pistol, by the crying of a trumpet, or the beat 
 of a drum ; but, like the soldier on the field, " he 
 may swear an oath or two, and so sleep again." 
 Also, men may be aroused by gentler methods, 
 as our first parents were, by " sweet sounds upon 
 a bank of flowers." There is a rude but effectual 
 device which boys employ, the application of 
 sulphur fumes to the nostrils. The last great ex- 
 ponent of that dangerous method was Jonathan 
 Edwards, who succeeded in bringing men to an 
 apprehension of "the mercy of God in Christ" 
 by putting them in mind of hell. Since his time 
 we have grown more humane, or, it may be, more
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 357 
 
 sentimental ; and the Christian hell has become 
 a comparatively tolerable place and heaven less 
 alluring. 
 
 The cry of the young preacher is, Back to Jesus. 
 Backward is always the cry of the traditionalists. 
 The preacher must first tell us, as Paul did, what 
 God has done for his soul, and so persuade us 
 in virtue of that to embrace, as the Catechism 
 says, Jesus Christ freely offered to us in the Gos- 
 pel and shining with a new light. But first, God 
 must have done something for his soul, which is 
 pretty clearly revealed in his life. That is his sole 
 warrant of authority. 
 
 Those whose business it is to make this con- 
 dition of mind to prevail have direct instruction 
 under the hand of Paul. That is his supreme value 
 to the world, his perception of the state of mind 
 which results in right conduct. What, then, is 
 his view of the conduct proper for the ministry? 
 If you would commend or approve yourselves 
 as ministers of God, he writes, you must refrain 
 from giving offence, you must be patient even in 
 affliction, in necessities, in distress, in labours, in 
 watchings, in fastings. He also prescribes the con- 
 duct to be observed in circumstances which, I 
 fancy, are less common now than in his time — 
 imprisonments and tumults. He makes no men-
 
 358 ESSAYS IN FALLACY 
 
 tion of skill in theological argument, but he makes 
 a great deal of pureness, long-suffering, kindness, 
 unfeigned love, the word of truth, the power of 
 God. Finally he becomes more direct, and in one 
 of his splendid paradoxes charges that, if you 
 would make a religious condition of mind to pre- 
 vail, you must be sorrowful yet rejoicing, poor 
 yet making many rich, having nothing yet pos- 
 sessing all things. Then those days will come, 
 which St. Francis yearned for, "when every fire- 
 side shall be a temple, and every believer a priest 
 of God." 
 
 But how shall this transformation of the na- 
 ture be accomplished? Kant himself admits that 
 it is not by a gradual reformation, but by a fun- 
 damental revolution, by a new birth. In this 
 all religious teachers from Jesus to the street 
 preacher are in agreement. But whilst salvation 
 is an inward experience of the individual, the 
 new principle in w^hich it results can be assured 
 only if its supremacy in a community consti- 
 tutes the king-dom of God. That is the true 
 church. 
 
 At this point the philosopher fails us. In an 
 atmosphere of abstract intellectualism common 
 humanity will not likely find stimulus or incen- 
 tive towards that chan<re which he describes as a
 
 THE FALLACY IN THEOLOGY 359 
 
 fundamental revolution, and the Christian experi- 
 ences as conversion. To the one it is an affair of 
 the reason : to the other it is an affair of the ima- 
 gination, an emotion, a passionate enthusiasm, a 
 fresh miracle each time it occurs.
 
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